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WAY, TRUTH, AND LIFE. 



SERMONS 



NAHOR AUGUSTUS STAPLES, 






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WITH 



GH1 ;a 

A SKETCH OF HIS LIFE, 



BY 



JOHN W. CHADWICL 



' Gedenke zu leben." — Goethe. 



BOSTON: 
WILLIAM V. SPENCER. 

1870. 



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Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, by 

S. W. GREEN, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 

£S*5£mPbistrict of New-York. 



S. W. GREEN, 

PRINTER, 

16 and 18 Jacob St., New- York. 



TO 

FRED AND CORA, 

TRUSTING THAT THEY MAY REALIZE THE BEAUTIFUL 

IDEALS OF MAN AND WOMAN, CHERISHED BY 

HIM WHO BEING DEAD YET SPEAKETH 

IN THIS LITTLE BOOK, 

I DEDICATE 

WHAT I HAVE DONE TOWARD MAKING IT. 



PREFACE. 



There are three persons who, better than any others, could 
have told the simple, uneventful story of Mr. Staples's life. 
Of these his wife stands first. She would not have me say it, 
but I must. And I regret unspeakably that any distrust of 
her own ability or fitness should have prevented her doing 
what I am sure she would have done most perfectly. As I 
have talked with her about her husband, her appreciation of 
his character and work has seemed so perfect, her sympathy 
with all his hopes and plans so lively and profound, that I 
never shall be reconciled to her unwillingness to be his bio- 
grapher and the editress of his writings. I am only partly 
reconciled by the consideration that she would not have told, 
as I must tell, or be no true biographer of him, what noble 
furtherance her husband found in her, what intellectual and 
spiritual companionship, what rest in weariness, what patient 
cheer in sickness and in death. 

The other two persons are Carlton Staples, the brother of 
Augustus, and Robert Collyer, his friend. Of these, the brother, 
at an early day, surrendered his claim on this task to the 
friend, who went on year after year hoping against hope that 
the burden would be lifted a little and opportunity be granted 
for telling what a man was here. But the new years have 
only brought new cares, and at last he has felt himself obliged 



VI PREFACE. 

to relinquish all hope of doing that which, with an easier yoke, 
would be the first-fruits of his leisure. And here again I am 
only partly reconciled when I remember that Carlton Staples 
would not have told how well he played a brother's part, and 
that Robert Collyer would not have written how large a place 
he himself filled in his friend's thought and life. 

Among Mr. Staples's Brooklyn friends the desire for a brief 
memoir of him, together with a few of his sermons, has not 
diminished with the lapse of years. At their request and Mrs. 
Staples's I have prepared this volume. Should it meet with 
their approval, I shall be satisfied, for it has already met with 
hers. I even dare to hope that a few persons who did not 
know Mr. Staples when he was living may come to know him 
in these pages. I have tried to make such a sketch that those 
who read it shall declare, " This is no eulogy ; it is the true 
story of a man's life." My gladness that my task is ended is 
tinged with sorrow ; for the many hours of sweet communion I 
have had with this " son of man in heaven " have rewarded me 
a thousand times over for my easy toil. T W C 

Brooklyn, November 25, 1869. 



CONTENTS. 



SKETCH. 

PAGE 

I. Youth and early Education • . 9 

II. Life in Meadville ....... 23 

III. Life in Lexington 40 

IV. Milwaukee and the Army ..... 53 
V. Brooklyn • . . . • • . . .69 

SERMONS. 

I. Life • . . .111 

II. Knowledge through Loss and Separation . 130 

III. The Thought of the Heart 141 

IV. The Promises of God 153 

PARTS OF SERMONS. 

I. The Way of Life 167 

II. All Things are yours 173 

III. Being by Doing and Trying to Do . . . . 181 

IV. Binding and Loosing 190 

V. The Joy of Jesus 198 

VI. Rejoice in the Lord 201 

VII. The Life which now is 204 

VIII. The Providence of Necessity .... 213 

IX. Each a Penny ........ 219 

X. Endure Hardness ....... 228 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

XI. Judging the Bible 232 

XII. Sheepfolds 236 

XIII. Whither goest thou? 238 

XIV. The Power of Love 240 

XV. Past and Present 245 

XVI. The Pure in Heart 253 

XVII. Personal Religion 259 



NAHOR AUGUSTUS STAPLES. 



I. 
YOUTH AND EARLY EDUCATION. 

Nahor Augustus Staples was born in Mendon, Mass., 
August 24th, 1830. Jason Staples, his father, was born in 
December, 1799; ms mother, Phila Taft, only a month later, 
January, 1800. Both family names appear on the first tax- 
list of the' town, that of 1685, and both names figure 
largely in the history of the place. In 1868 Carlton 
Staples, the brother of Augustus, delivered an address at 
Mendon, commemorative of the incorporation of the town 
two hundred years before; and the poet of the occasion 
made tender and affectionate reference to Augustus, who, 
could he have been spared, would have added much to the 
joy of the occasion, and would have rejoiced in it mightily. 
For, as Carlton shows in his address, the traditions of the 
town are of no mean sort. It has always had a great deal of 
character and individuality. Once, too, it had magnificent 
proportions, but of these it has long since been shorn. A 
sad commentary on the " good old times," in which so 
many have such faith, are some of the traditions. In 
1730, there was a long/ and desperate struggle over the 
location of the new meeting-house. But at the raising a 



IO N. A. STAPLES. 

great effort was made to erase old differences, and a barrel 
of rum was voted and disposed of to inaugurate an era of 
good feeling. But the next day a town meeting had to be 
called, " to find out who by cutting had damnified the meet- 
ing-house," an attempt having been made with axes in the 
night to undo the labor of the day. The first minister of 
the place was a Mr. Emerson, the ancestor, seven genera- 
tions back, of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with ministers all the 
way between them. Several of his successors were men of 
force and character ; and in a time when the minister was 
much more of a social influence than at present, did much 
toward giving to the town a manly spirit. Like Jerusalem 
of old, the town is " beautiful for situation ;" occupying a 
high position, overlooking lovely hills in every direction. 
Especially pleasant is the out-look from the farm-house 
where Jason Staples lived, and where his children were 
born to him. Augustus always took a hearty pride in the 
physical beauty of the place ; all his life long went back to 
it with joy, and revelled in its walks and drives and views, 
and longed at such times to have his friends with him; 
would write them glowing letters, some of which, to 
Collyer, for example, are full of pine-scent and the smell of 
the ground. Here he would bring his wife, and never tire 
of driving her about the country, pointing out every spot that 
was associated with his early life, giving one reminiscence 
after another in his dreamy way, while the old horse, about 
which he used to joke his father a good deal, would drone 
along, often stopping to browse by the way without its 
being noticed. There was the rock he crept under the first 
time he tried to swear — he wanted to swear that he might 
feel manly, and he thought that God's wrath couldn't reach 
him underneath the rock. There was Mendon Pond, a 



YOUTH AND EARLY EDUCATION. II 

beautiful sheet of water ; its pleasant banks where he had 
fished and bathed; its dim, solemn recollections of the 
eldest brother whose lifeless body was brought home from 
there one bright summer morning. There was the oldest 
sister's farm and home, where every thing was upon such a 
generous scale — in such order and complete repair, and so 
full of solid comfort; and the sister with her large, tender 
soul, always gentle with him, and ready to shield him from 
every annoyance. He never forgot his sense of desolation 
when this sister was married and went away from home ; 
how he stole from home and went to her house, how she 
took him to her room, and soothed and comforted his rebel- 
lious little heart. There was the dark wood that had to be 
passed in going to his sister's house, and which his youthful 
imagination peopled with " gorgons and chimeras dire." 
There was the little school-house where he first went to 
school, and the big school-house where he did his first 
teaching, and got his first deep sense of power. All these 
associations, not very significant for others, were marvel- 
ously so for him, and grew more so at the last, when his 
heart went out as never before to all the old places and old 
friends. 

Of seven children Augustus was the fifth. After him 
there came another Henry to take the place of the Henry 
who was drowned ; and another Raaiel to take the place 
of one who died. It was no. easy living that the old people 
got from their farm. But there was more love than money 
in the house, and an amount of intelligence far in excess of 
the amount of culture, though both parents were exceed- 
ingly fond of books, and read as much of a good sort as 
their busy life would let them. The mother is still living, a 
tall, straight, noble-looking woman, as queenly a woman in 



12 N. A. STAPLES. 

her make as one would meet in a day's journey, a predes- 
tined mother of prophets, wonderfully fresh at the end of 
her appointed three score years and ten, and well named 
Phila. From her Augustus inherited many a noble trait. 
The father died six years ago. In one of his letters Au- 
gustus speaks of him as " one of Nature's poets." In 
another, written after his death, he says : 

" It will be a disappointment to me, as long as I live, to think 
that father did not come to visit us at Brooklyn. I have 
looked forward to your coming together ever since we have 
been there, and then to think that he had made up his mind to 
come, and then was disappointed, seems very hard. 

" Father's life has been a very hard one in many respects. 
He has been a hard-working man, and has seen a great deal of 
trouble and anxiety, and has borrowed a great deal of unneces- 
sary trouble. Still, the trouble which he borrowed was just as 
real and just as hard to bear as any other. Let us be glad that 
he lived long enough to see the fruits of his hard work, and to 
taste the pleasure of having all the money he needed, and, 
above all, of seeing a large family grow up to prosperity and 
usefulness. And yet, in spite of all that father has suffered, 
few men have enjoyed more, and few men have got more good 
out of life. He was for the most part cheerful, and always in 
the enjoyment of perfect health. He loved good society, and 
found a world of pure and elevated enjoyment in the hosts of 
good books which he was always reading. I have known few 
men who improved so fast in every way, as he has done for the 
last few years. It seems as if he might have enjoyed the next 
ten years more than any others of his whole life. Still his 
strength was failing, and he could not have enjoyed life after 
he had become unable to work. His great soul and noble 
mind never found half room enough to grow in here ; they will 
now blossom out in all their beauty. We have every thing to 
be proud and grateful for in our father's life. It was so pure, 



YOUTH AND EARLY EDUCATION. 1 3 

and true, and high-minded, and honest, amid the most trying 
circumstances, that I can not think of it without an emotion of 
pride and thankfulness." 

Even more worthy of remark than the particular traits 
here mentioned, are certain others. Says one who knew 
him well : 

"He was a remarkable man. I never heard him give ex- 
pression to a narrow thought ; full of real sentiment, he was 
fastidiously afraid of any thing bordering upon sentimentality. 
His feelings were very tender, and he would manoeuvre in all 
sorts of ways, and put himself to a great deal of inconvenience 
to hide them. He was singularly unselfish and true. Had the 
most downright integrity of soul ; could scarcely bear to be in 
the presence of a person whose character he disliked. Was 
perfectly independent of the opinions of others, and at the 
same time gratified with any true appreciation of himself. He 
did not go to church, because he could not hear any thing that 
pleased or benefited him. He was truly progressive. His 
sons grew up to his level, but never got beyond him." 

In personal appearance Augustus was part father and part 
mother. But on the spiritual side he was in most respects 
his father over again. He was like him in his love of 
fun, and many a good joke did they crack between them. 
He was like him in his independence, and in his sturdy and 
perpetual discountenance of all meanness and wrong. 

He was a wild, wayward boy, full to overflowing with 
life and energy, mischievous, and saturated with fun and 
frolic, much given as in later years to imitation and mimic- 
ry, for which he had great natural talent. This talent, of 
course, made him many friends. But it must also have 
made him enemies. Then he regretted bitterly his use of 



14 N. A. STAPLES. 

it. He could bear enmity when it was drawn down upon 
him by any righteous indignation on his part, but not when 
it was the result of his thoughtlessness and folly. He was 
not useful or industrious as a boy. though he could work 
well on great occasions, but had a talent for shirking work 
and making plausible excuses. But his idleness was Hor- 
ace's strenua inertia, earnest idleness. He might shirk the 
task imposed on him by others, but he was always pursuing 
some plan or idea of his own. He had an intense love of 
out-door life, and lived among the woods and hills a pen- 
sive, brooding sort of life, in strange contrast with the hila- 
rity of his conduct with his fellows, and with much deeper 
joy. From every other sort of enjoyment except music, no 
matter how deeply he entered into it at the time, he would 
come away dissatisfied; but from his silent communings 
with nature he arose refreshed and strengthened. But na- 
ture served him other purposes than this. He had a great 
interest in all kinds of machinery, and was quick to catch 
the essential principle of any new invention, and embody it 
in rough imitations. The banks of the little stream that 
runs by his early home used to be lined with his dams 
turning aside the water to test the power and skill of his 
various contrivances. Adverse to all stated tasks, appa- 
rently because he lacked the nervous energy necessary for 
long-continued physical exertion, he could yet do harder 
work than others of his age, run faster, climb higher, and 
perform many difficult and daring feats. The secret of all 
this was ambition to excel or win the praise of others. He 
was, perhaps, too willing to attribute all the successes of his 
early life to the spirit of rivalry and the love of commenda- 
tion. As he grew older he affirmed that but for his ambi- 
tion he should have thrown himself away. But his deep 



YOUTH AND EARLY EDUCATION. 



*5 



instincts of purity and spirituality, his noble dissatisfaction 
with trivial and unworthy pursuits, were, no doubt, greater 
helpers than he reckoned them. It was a characteristic of 
his whole life to underrate the motives of his conduct. For 
his undoubted self-assertion and occasional apparent ego- 
tism he made full atonement by an ever-present central 
modesty that nourished his character at its roots, and made 
him deal more sternly with himself than others could possi- 
bly deal with him. His dislike of farm- work drove him to 
shoe-making. But his recollections of that quiet, thought- 
ful occupation were never pleasant. He had a grudge 
against the time he spent at it as so much time lost, that 
might have been spent in the pursuit of knowledge. But 
he made friends at this time whom he never afterward 
failed to appreciate ; and who shall say that this occupation 
did not foster, through its opportunities for meditation, a 
longing for that larger life from which he afterward looked 
back on it with indignation ? 

He was always a good scholar and stood well in the 
winter schools, where also he had the same dislike of regu- 
lar tasks that characterized his physical activity. It was 
not till he was about eighteen that he began to struggle for 
a liberal education. Before this he went to school for a 
short time at Medfield ; and a letter now before me of that 
date would recall to many a boy his first school days away 
from home, the first dangerous conceit of knowledge, the 
arrival of the box from home with a mother's love well 
stitched and ironed into the humble wardrobe, a father's 
- thoughtfulness taking the shape of apples and the indispen- 
sable, too little valued, and too evanescent dollars. The 
real start was at the formal School at Westfield, whither 
he went, through the persistent and disinterested efforts of 



1 6 N. A. STAPLES. 

his brother Carlton, in August, 1848, with a view to pre- 
pare himself for teaching. Once there, his desire for cul- 
ture increased rapidly, and he made rapid progress. At the 
close of his first term he taught a winter school at Uxbridge, 
and afterward went back again. On entering the school, he 
began to keep a journal, and with various intermissions con- 
tinued doing so until his death. For the most part the in- 
termissions correspond with terms of physical depression, or 
with periods of unsatisfactory work. When the journal is 
kept at all it is kept honestly. Nothing is written with the 
ulterior view of having it one day come to light. It begins 
meagerly and superficially enough, but soon broadens and 
deepens. The first series of entries only lasts about ten 
days and ends with a " Normal walk," preceded by " a feast 
of water-melons," the whole affair being recorded as " the 
best kind of a time." 

But what is the meaning of the next entry ? The date of 
it is October 8th. 1849. A change has come over the 
spirit of his dream. He has experienced religion ! Pain- 
fully amusing are the entries in his journal and the letters 
home for the few months following. They make one's 
cheeks burn with shame for the dear boy, and with right- 
eous indignation at the system that could instill such mor- 
bid fancies and hypocrisies into a fresh young heart. Here 
are a few samples of the " perilous stuft " that he indulged 
in at this interesting period : 

"Friday, October $th, 1849. — I have now in contemplation 
the unworthiness ot such a sinful creature as myself, for now 
that my Heavenly Father has forgiven my sins, I have sinned 
once more against his holy name. This day I have done a lit- 
tle of something to save souls." 

" Wednesday, October iot/1. — I find it hard to resist the 



YOUTH AND EARLY EDUCATION. 1 7 

devil that he may flee from me. He has so long had dominion 
over me that to prepare my heart for the indwelling of the Holy 
Spirit is hard." 

"Monday, i$th. — O my unbelief! I am so prone to sin ; I 
have such a wicked heart that I can not lay hold of the pro- 
mises of God as I ought. I am considering the propriety of 
joining the church." 

" Tuesday, 23d. — I am nothing in the sight of God. My 
heart is so desperately wicked that my mind is continually 
wandering away from him." 

"Friday, November 2d. — I have neglected writing in my 
memoranda on account of many doubtful and dark moments. 
Next Sabbath I expect to be baptized in the name of my glori- 
ous Redeemer." 

"March 24th, 1850. — I almost shrink from the idea of pla- 
cing my thoughts and feelings on paper, and well I may, for 
more than three months have elapsed since I last performed 
this useful and interesting ceremony. [Ceremony indeed ! 
What has become of the fresh-hearted boy we knew a year 
ago ?] And during this time God only knows the amount of 
my sins. I am not deserving the name of Christian. I have 
backslidden indeed. My closet duties are neglected. I can 
not enumerate the amount or tell the enormity of my sins. I 
will if possible form stronger resolutions and nobler determina- 
tions. 

Appended to this entry are six resolutions. They begin 
drearily enough, but get better as they go on : 

" Resolved, First. To read at least one chapter in the Bible 
every day ; beginning at the book of Genesis, and so on in 
order. Also [naughty suspicion of the unprofitableness of cer- 
tain genealogies and imprecations] to read other chapters more 
peculiarly suited to my feelings." 

The second and third resolves are in the cloud-region of 
2 



1 8 N. A. STAPLES. 

pietism ; in the fourth he comes down to the solid earth, 
and keeps there till the end : 

" Fourth. Never to feel proud. 

" Fifth. Never to tell what I have done, or to quote myself 
as good authority. 

" Sixth. To refrain from unnecessary conversation." 

And here the journal stops again, and is not resumed 
until the life at Westfield is all over. In this last entry the 
reader will perceive many tokens of returning health and 
sanity. Nothing had been written for some time before 
and nothing was written for some time after. But for 
about a year he kept up this "big play-actorism under 
God's earnest sky." Yet it was not all acting. Most of 
the thoughts, the very words in fact, that disfigure his 
journal and letters at this time, are the mere cant of the 
revivalist ; but in the midst of all this rubbish there are 
many signs of such an -honest personal religion as a boy 
may have without shame at the time or ever after. Among 
these are his fifth and sixth resolves, and such bits as where 
he says, " May I spend this day right at the feet of Jesus, 
and not be proud or try to show off before people." Do not 
these italics point at a real palpable devil, a devil with 
whom Augustus Staples had many a drawn battle before 
he had him fairly underneath his heel ? 

The letters of this period are even more painful than the 
journals, they are so unreal, so unlike what a noble young 
man's letters are, when he is not the victim of a false religious- 
ness. What shall we say of the system that will permit — 
nay, even encourage a young man to write in this strain to 
his parents ? The date is November 7th, 1849. 

" I have one word to write, one simple request to make, and 



YOUTH AND EARLY EDUCATION. 1 9 

that is that you will consider the anxiety I must experience in 
regard to your spiritual welfare. Believing, as I do, that those 
who do not believe in the Lord Jesus Christ will surely be cast 
out from the presence of God for ever, and it being my deter- 
mination to stand at that great day at the right hand of God, 
can I see you thus separated from me for ever ? " And so on 
ad nauseam. 

" When I come home (if it should be the good pleasure of 
the Almighty to permit me once more to return), it would be 
very pleasing to me to have devotional exercises in the family, 
if there is no objection." 

When he got home he read his answer and rebuke in his 
father's clear and earnest eyes, and no more was said about 
it. One can imagine the sad. smile with which the father 
read these juvenile lucubrations. 

" In your last letter it was stated that I had better not join 
the church, for fear that when I come home I might feel differ- 
ently. Now this was the very reason why I wished to join, to 
prevent my ever thinking or feeling different." 

And so the matter was now " settled," not, as he hopes, 
without due consideration, and his name " is now enrolled 
with those who are ready to die in Jesus's war." But 
many things that are considered " settled" get sadly un- 
settled in this jostling world, and young Staples found that 
even the snug inclosure of a church is no sure preventive 
against " ever thinking or feeling different ;" that it was 
very much as his father had suggested it might be, and 
couldn't have been much more so if he had never joined 
the church at all. For no sooner did he get safe home 
again, than things began x to take on quite a different appear- 
ance. In comparison with the love and rectitude and self- 



20 N. A. STAPLES. 

denial of his parents, he saw his own external pietism sink 
into worthlessness. His old cheerfulness came back to him ; 
his merry laugh rang out once more; the half-forgotten 
stories were revived ; the flute that had been laid aside was 
hunted up ; the feet that loved to dance right well tripped 
to the dear old measures, and he became almost himself 
again. 

Almost, but not entirely. It was a long, long time before 
that could be said of him. The iron had entered too 
deeply into his soul. 

During the year he spent in Mendon aftei leaving 
Westfield, he broke his evangelical connections, and became 
a member of the Unitarian Church. He also made up his 
mind to study for the Unitarian ministry. But it was not 
till he was more than half way through his course at Mead- 
ville, that he succeeded in unlearning what the Westfield 
revivalists had taught him. Long before this he had 
unlearned the doctrines of Trinity and Atonement and 
Depravity; but after he had done this he kept on trying to 
be religious in the orthodox way, and making himself 
miserable because he could not succeed, as we shall see 
hereafter. In one respect his orthodox experience was a 
great advantage to him in after years. It enabled him to 
speak of orthodoxy at first hand ; and if, so speaking of it, 
he spoke of it at times with terrible severity, the fault was 
not in him, but in the system that had so marred his growth. 
His reaction from it was not sudden, but it was profound. 
A burnt dog dreads the fire. He hated it. He never for- 
got how it had unmanned him. He never forgave it that 
treatment. Perhaps iu after years his friends sometimes re- 
gretted the way in which he buffeted the monster that had 
so frightened him in his youth. But perhaps, too, they did 



YOUTH AND EARLY EDUCATION. 2 1 

not know what recollections edged his sarcasm, what 
gross imposition had been practiced upon him. Had it 
been a person he was dealing with, he would have been 
much more forgiving. But he did not think the command, 
" Forgive your enemies," applied to systems of theology 
that were the enemies, not of his fame or fortune, but of 
his life. 

But it was a good day for the Westfield revivalists when 
they made a convert of Staples, such influence did he have 
with others, so intense was his ardor, so contagious his con- 
viction. Years afterward, when he was at Lexington, one of 
the Westfield scholars found him out, and told him what a 
good and lasting influence his earnestness had had upon him. 
But it is quite terrible to think what a good revivalist he 
would have made, what multitudes of excellent people he 
would have convicted of sin, and enraptured with the pro- 
mise of a future heaven much inferior to the present one 
they were enjoying before he met with them. 

In estimating the value of this juvenile religious experi- 
ence, it must be borne in mind that this experience was not 
the dawn of his religious life. Had it been so it might be 
more kindly spoken of. But no ; the dawn had risen long 
before, and this Westfield experience was but a cloud that 
overcame its brightness, a cloud that held his sunny heart 
enshrouded in its gloom for years, which added to him no- 
thing ; all of the beauty of its own tangled fringes being that 
of the life behind them, a life it could conceal but no more 
quench than any cloud that vails the sun can quench its 
burning heat. 

But whatever the Normal School did for him on his re- 
ligious side, there can r^e no question that on the intel- 
lectual side he made, while there, great improvement It 



2 2 N. A. STAPLES. 

was there that he discovered that it was a joy for him to 
write. The "compositions" were no burden, but were 
looked forward to with sincere pleasure, and were written 
with all possible care. Having finished his course, he ob- 
tained a position as teacher in Mendon village. As a 
teacher he was eminently successful, and had great power 
over, and influence with, his scholars, many of whom 
still remember him well, and speak of him with deep rever- 
ence and affection. He seemed to instill into his pupils his 
own sensitiveness to praise or blame. His journal at this 
period takes an exceedingly practical turn, dealing with rail- 
roads, the world's fair, and state politics ; showing a lively 
interest in the anti-slavery movement, and recording with 
admiration a saying of Theodore Parker's at the May 
meetings in Boston, wherein he told one of his fellow- 
ministers that he had the gun his grandfather had used at 
Lexington, and that if he should come into his house to 
hunt for fugitive slaves, he would do for him what his 
grandfather did for the British. The germ of his later radi- 
calism in theology is in these sentences. For it was his 
absolute certainty that Parker was right on the slavery 
question, that led him to suspect that he might be right on 
questions of theology. His political radicalism in general 
was the vestibule of his theological radicalism, inasmuch as 
he saw that the hunkers of politics were too frequently con- 
servative in their theology, and vice versd, to admit of any 
doubt that here was no mere coincidence, but a truly logical 
connection. 



II. 

LIFE AT MEADVILLE. 

The personal influences that determined Mr. Staples to 
go to Meadville, were mainly those of his brother, who had 
preceded him there by a few months, and Rev. Samuel 
Clarke, of Uxbridge, a man who recognized his fine natural 
talents earlier than any other person, and did more to in- 
spire him with confidence in his own abilities. He watched 
over his career with a true fatherly solicitude, but was not 
permitted to behold except 

" With larger, other eyes than ours," 

the fulfillment in him of his generous predictions of success 
and usefulness. Another early personal influence of which 
he always spoke with gratitude, was that of one of his 
teachers, Sylvester Scott: but this influence was upon his 
character in general, rather than upon his choice of a pro- 
fession. 

He arrived at Meadville, September 3d, 185 1, and went 
to work at once with great earnestness. During the three 
years that he remained there his journal is almost never 
interrupted, and affords an ample index to his pursuits, his 
feelings, the sources and the measure of his growth. Other 
records of the same period are numerous letters home, the 
most of them written to his younger sister, Rachel, between 
whom and himself there was always a most tender and 
beautiful relation. From first to last his dealing with him- 



24 N. A. STAPLES. 

self in his journal is frank and resolute. There are many- 
passages which would not bear the test of the apostle : " So 
fight I not as one who beateth the air." A great deal of 
his fighting was of this sort. But it was real enough to 
him for the time being. And mingled with it, and every- 
day growing more prominent, was fighting of a very different 
sort, with obvious faults of character, obvious to him if not 
to those who knew him from without. No one ever tried 
harder than this man to be religious in the orthodox way, 
but he was continually applying the test of his daily life to 
his religion. It would not be fair to take him at his word 
concerning his own growth in culture or in character. As 
the stars seem much more distant seen from a mountain- 
top than when we gaze up at them from the plain, so the 
greater his intellectual and moral elevation the farther off 
appeared the heaven of his hope and aspiration. In judg- 
ing of himself he never seemed to consider — and it was 
best that he should not — that his horizon retreated just in 
the measure of his ascent. And so it was that while to 
others he was a marvel of growth, and grew more rapidly 
every year of his life, the very last being no exception, he 
was never satisfied with himself. He was beset behind and 
before. On the one hand, it seemed to him that he never 
could make up for his loss of early training ; on the other 
hand, there seemed so many things to read and study, that 
a moment's rest burdened him like a sin. " Have done 
but little to-day, as I intended; but do not feel just right 
about it. It seems to me I never am in a condition that 
justifies me in resting." This feeling always haunted him, 
and often kept him at his tasks when he should have been 
in bed or in the fields. " If I can speak a word sincerely, 
or breathe a prayer in faith, let it be this — that I may look 



LIFE AT MEADVILLE. 



25 



fonvard to no life but that of growth, to no pleasure but 
the discharge of duty, and value every thing as it subserves 
these ends.* ? With a great deal of approbativeness he was, 
while in the school, exceedingly sensitive to criticism, but 
he always received it in an admirable spirit. No matter 
how severe, unjust, or personally offensive it was, he turned 
it over in his mind and asked himself : how much of this is 
true ? How can this profit me ? He found it easier to 
forgive his enemies, than it was sometimes to forgive his 
friends their ill-considered praise. But if the desire to sur- 
pass himself was the tap-root of his culture, the desire to 
surpass others was his besetting sin. Again and again we 
find him speaking of it with great sadness of heart. But 
those who knew him best at this time, are very certain that 
ambition and rivalry did not play so large a part in his 
motives as he imagined. The desire to help others was 
undoubtedly the ruling motive of his life. But let him 
speak for himself a little : 

" September i\th. 1S51. — This is the season I love. There is 
a pleasant melancholy about it that sympathizes with the vein of 
sadness and gloom which runs through my nature. Few would 
believe this ; but it is true, and I love to cherish it. When I 
am sad, I am happy." 

u September 2,$th. — Have struck a dividend and find our 
board to be sixty-five cents a week, which is much cheaper 
than we expected. Met James Freeman Clarke ; was much 
surprised to find him bearded like a Turk. ;? 

This meeting with James Freeman Clarke, at that time 
preaching hi Meadville. was a great event for him. This 
good man seems to have a remarkable faculty for breaking 
up the great deeps of conservatism. Many a young man 
dates from some word of his the beginning of a progress 



2 6 N. A. STAPLES. 

which can not be abruptly terminated. His influence upon 
Staples was very great not only in theology but in religion ; 
sending him home to the solitude of his own breast, and 
making him feel that fidelity to self is the corner-stone of all 
true life. There was about him a preeminent healthfulness 
which rebuked Staples's morbid fancies with a silent elo- 
quence that was more effectual than any spoken word. 
There came a time when the pupil, who was at first shocked 
by the radicalisms of his teacher, went far beyond him. 
But he never bated one jot of his reverence and affection, 
and to the very last emphasized many a lesson of liberality 
and love and courage with his name. 

"September 29th. — The weather somewhat stormy, the sky 
cloudy, but storm and clouds can not make a day gloomy in 
which I receive a letter of eight pages from such a friend as 
Dr. Metcalf." 

" October 6th. Have lived more as I desire to live to-clay 
than on any previous day of my life." 

" October igt/i. — Completed the first volume of Channing's 
Memoirs. One of his most beautiful traits is his love for his 
mother. There is nothing in the history of any man's life that 
so wins my admiration as attachment to his mother. I hope 
to have the power, some day, of bringing religion in all its im- 
portance and beauty to bear upon the family circle." 

" October 1W1. — I sometimes think I am enjoying too much 
for a person to enjoy upon earth, and fear lest my Heavenly 
Father shall find it necessary to deprive me of prosperity, to 
give me the stern discipline of misfortune. May my only reason 
for desiring life be that I may be useful ! May I have that pa- 
tience, that long-suffering which can hear my most cherished 
doctrines spoken against calmly." 

" November 1st. — Mr. A borrowed Mr. M 's violin for 

me this morning, which was quite a luxury. I feel it to be 



LIFE AT MEADVILLE. 27 

wrong that Christians, that any body can not enjoy music with 

impunity. Called on . Poor fellow, I feel sorry for him on 

account of his irritable temper. I think it causes him much 
sorrow. May I learn from him, as well as from my own sad 
experience, to guard well my passions. 

"November id. — Felt how much happiness Christians sacri- 
fice in remaining so nearly passive. There is more enjoyment 
in a single act than in a multitude of prayers without the act. 
This afternoon I have not improved the time as I ought ; the 
shameful truth is, I ate too much dinner." 

" I believe the true desire of my heart is to do good ; and 
strange as it may seem, and contrary to many professions, I 

have never felt this desire before, truly. Mr. A. told me 

he had been into the jail formerly, and given papers to the 
prisoners. This seemed to open a new field, and I am rejoiced 
at the thought of having so precious an opportunity for doing 
good. Here I trust I may labor unknown to any one but Him 
who is the prisoner's friend. I pray God to grant me some 
success in gaining the confidence of these poor souls. 

"November 16th. — Mr. Clarke informed me there was an ex- 
cellent opportunity for some energetic young man to build up a 
society in Milwaukee ; spoke of the flourishing condition of 
those new societies which our students are forming. I love to 
hear this, and am impatient to be in the work. I see by the pa- 
pers that at the Autumnal Conference in New England, they 
have noticed the decline or neglect of private family worship, 
and the want of some sort of a creed. These are just the points 
upon which I have often spoken, and which I think it to be the 
duty of every lover of Unitarianism to lend his voice and exam- 
ple to remedy. I think it to be the result of a reaction produced 
by the restraint imposed by the stern Trinitarianism which re- 
quired its believers to read a chapter in the book of Chronicles 
with as much relish and reverence as they would the fourteenth 
chapter of John. / 

" Nove7nber 27th, Thanksgiving. — . . Have heard an excellent 
discourse from J. F. Clarke. . . This evening Mr. W. bor- 



28 N. A. STAPLES. 

rowed a violin, and we bad dancing, and have had a hearty din- 
ner, fine exercise, and good laughs, for all of which I feel 
thankful. If I have done any thing wrong, may God forgive me ; 
but I feel that, in dancing, we have really done good to ourselves, 
and have, we hope, to others. But where will another Thanks- 
giving find me : how far advanced in virtue, how many faults 
overcome, how many faculties cultivated. . . 

" December 3d. . . Found upon visiting the jail that all but 
two of those I had seen before had left — one boy of thirteen to 
the house of correction for four years. How mysterious these 
things are to me — how shall we draw the line that divides vol- 
untary crime from that which is the effect of education. 

" December \th. . . . Purchased a small tin tea-pot for eighteen 
cents, and a quarter of a pound of tea for twenty-five cents. 
Am now prepared to make a cup of tea ; the reason for doing 
this is that I may keep awake nights. I can accomplish much 
more, and I really need the time as much as any body can. It 
is now twenty minutes past eleven, and I am not sleepy at all. 

" Dece7nber $th. ... I desire to love some being that has 
been made generously strong by nature. My own nature, having 
never been turned in the right channel, has feasted upon self as 
supplying the absence of other objects, and here lies the work 
of a lifetime, which, had I commenced when a child, might have 
been spent in building up instead of pulling down. It would 
be a great privilege to be enabled to love God with all the fer- 
vor of which I am capable, to hate sin with the hatred of which 
I am capable. I would have a dread of insincerity which would 
always compel me to speak the truth and nothing but the truth. 
I would have convictions of duty so strong as to give me the 
zeal which I am capable of showing when self is the great I Am. 

" December gth . — . . . I have received my theme from Prof. 

F . I certainly desire a clear view of the claims of things and 

actions in the way of reforms. I would like to know just what 
position to take, and how to act. I do not wish to live in the 
very same track which others have trod before me. I wish to 
have a way of my own first, and then if I learn that my way and 



LIFE AT MEADVILLE. 29 

opinions are those of others, be rejoiced, and not change them 
because others embrace them, thinking thereby to show a great 
individuality or independence of thought." 

" Thursday, December nth. — Have not performed as much 
to-day as I ought ; it will not really do for me to waste any time. 

It seems as if I must do everything at once I want a 

strong desire for truth ; this is the spring of knowledge ; it is the 
philosopher's stone. A man may talk for the sake of talking, 
read for the sake of being informed, think deeply and patiently 
for the purpose of being invincible. A man may do each and 
all of these things, and yet be a narrow-minded man ; but put 
as the corner-stone of all knowledge the love of truth, and the 
superstructure will be comely in all its parts." 

" December 14th. — Am conscious, I think, of being hones, 
when I say I am ready to be convinced of the truth wherever 
it may be found ; that my dearest preconceived opinions shall 
not disturb the independence of my thought." 

" Decei?iber 16th. — Carlton objected to my sitting up so late at 
night. I am really sorry for it, but I enjoy it so much, and can 
really accomplish so much work." 

" December 21st. — Not one aspiration unselfish and pure! 
Fitting for the ministry without feeling a single joy of which I 
wish to speak to others. I have never felt what it was to be 
forgiven." 

" Dece?nber 23^. — I sit down and quietly think over my pros- 
pects for time and eternity. Certainly I am as worthless a per- 
son as need be to help make up a world." 

These last two entries, read in the light of Carlton's good 
advice immediately preceding, and the new tea-pot of a 
fortnight earlier, will be credited to a weary body rather 
than to a wicked soul. There is something very pathe- 
tic in that burst of enthusiasm over his tea-pot and his tea. 
For the time was short enough ere it was not something to 
keep him awake that he wanted, but something to put him 



30 N. A. STAPLES. 

to sleep. Little he dreamed as he chuckled over the first- 
fruits of his tea-making, that there would come a time 

when 

" Not poppy, nor mandragora, 
Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, 
Could medicine him to that sweet sleep 
Which he owed yesterday." 

"December 2$th. — My greatest sin to-day is that I have done 
little, and have allowed others to think that I know more of 
music than I really do." 

"December 1W1. — Listened to Mr. in the morning on the 

text, ' The fashion of this world passeth away.' I thought some 
of it a miserable attempt to make some body cry." 

" January 6fh, 1852. — Bought two apples this evening, the 
first thing of the kind I have indulged in since I came to 
Meadville." 

"March i$th. — The trouble in my head has increased so 

much, I am obliged to give up study for the present. Mr. 

and I have determined to take a tramp in the woods, to visit the 
pine forests where the lumbering business is carried on exten- 
sively." 

The trouble in his head was no doubt bad enough, but 
there was also at this time a serious trouble in his heart. 
He had already seen much of Margaret Shippen, and from 
her and different members of her family had encountered 
a great deal of healthy opposition to his views, and was to 
encounter a good deal more. The whole family were far in 
advance of his own views at the time he made their ac- 
quaintance, and probably did more to modify them than 
any other influence in school or out of it. " Was talking 
with Mrs. Shippen," he writes, " was much surprised to 
hear her views of the Old Testament, but it does me good 
to hear my views spoken against." Margaret's sister mar- 



LIFE AT MEADVILLE. 3 1 

ried his brother Carlton. Another sister, Ellen, followed 
him, at two years' distance, into the unseen, and it is sweet 
to think that there they have renewed an intercourse which 
here was full of mutual help and inspiration. Wonderful 
flowers grow in her footsteps all through the journals and 
the letters of her noble friend. A certain question being 
answered in the affirmative, helped the heart trouble might- 
ily; but the trouble in his head, though not always patent, 
was never cured until 

" God's finger touched him, and he slept." 

In December, 1861, he thus recalls, in a letter to a Brook- 
lyn friend, his first impressions of the Shippen habitat. 

"Stapley Furnace, December 20, 1861. 
"My Dear Friend Mills : I am here in the midst of a 
small Switzerland, where a lover of contrasts could satisfy his 
most eager appetite for beauty. It is in the heart of the Coal 
and Iron country of North-western Pennsylvania. So rough 
as to be nearly useless, except for all mining purposes. The 
Allegheny river worries its way among these mountains, tinged 
with a sea-green, by the shadow of hemlocks, which are al- 
ways haunting it through all its windings. I well remember 
the first time I came here to see somebody* You can imagine 
how these wild glens, and steep hills, and flaring waters played 
upon the somewhat heated imagination of a young lover. Her 
house stood on the banks of the river, close beside the water, 
just where a little creek cuts through the bank and enters the 
river at right angles with the main stream. The house stood 
on the little point of land at the union of the two streams. It 
was sunset when I arrived at the top of the hill, behind the 
house. As I descended into the twilight of the ravine, I heard, 
four hundred feet below me, the rush of the little creek, the 
roar of the mill-wheels, and the lowing of cattle. (Ah ! it 



32 N. A. STAPLES. 

makes me feel young to think of it.) At last I reached the 
< cot in the valley I love. 7 The front porch was embowered 
in honeysuckles in full bloom, and somebody was standing at 
the door." 

" Meadville, April 30th. — My head is very bad, and it has 
been determined that I must give up study. I shall go home." 

" Mendon, June \\th. — Have closed twenty pairs of boots 
to-day. Head worse than usual." 

" J u fy 25th. — Have only closed twelve pairs of boots to-day. 
[And no wonder.] Have finished David Copperfield" 

"August 1st. — I am at a loss to know how to control my im- 
pulses better. T would not for the world cool the ardor of my 
temperament, or the determination with which I take hold of 
what I am doing. Still I want fixedness of purpose to go with 
this fervency, or that great blessing will become an injury." 

" August gt/z. — Feel remarkably free from impulse and ex- 
citement, and am in hopes that I shall be successful in control- 
ling myself without cooling the earnestness of my feelings." 

" August 24th. — Arrived in Meadville. This is my twenty- 
second birth-day. I am blessed beyond measure. Am not so 
far in advance of what I was a year ago as I could wish, yet 
nothing would tempt to exchange my position, as it is now, for 
what it was then. I would forget the steps already taken, and 
press on to new effort and success." 

" September 30//2. — Had a nice talk with J. F. Clarke ; told 
him how much good I thought he had done me. He seemed 
pleased, and said, ' You know in what particular way you have 
been benefited ; now go and do the same for others.' " 

" October 3d. — Dr. Stebbins advised the students to go out 
and find families where they could read and pray. I do not 
think so. I feel that the duties which I owe my fellow-men are 
those which I owe this school, at present." 

"November \st. — To-day the people of the United States 
make choice of a president. A solemn day ! The bells ought 
rather to be tolled than rung. Voted for John P. Hale." 

"November i$tk. — One of our teachers tried to tell us how 



LIFE AT MEADVILLE. 33 

large the universe is — a futile attempt. I obtained the idea 
that it is a ' whacker.' " 

"December \oth. — This evening had the most glorious sunset 
I ever saw. I have enjoyed another of those days which no 
one ever enjoys but a student in perfect health. Butler is the 
most charming study I have taken hold of. Am reading Plato 
on the immortality of the soul." 

" Dece7nber 25//L — In the evening I attended the Episcopal 
church. About half as much form I should like very much." 

" December 2jth. — I am happy and in good spirits that succeed 
each other day after day, and I must think that my love for 
Margaret and hers for me are the great turning-points in my cha- 
racter, and that it was essential to my growth. She is the pivot 
around which my life has turned. During the last year import- 
ant influences have been at work upon me, silently but surely. 

"January 6th, 1853. — Stopped in at the Methodist church, 
where they are having a revival. I confess my heart w 7 as 
warmed, and I felt interested. I bid them God speed." 

But the next time he did not like so well. 

"January %th. — Went to the Methodist churcn, but was not 
suited at all. It really moved me with indignation to see them 
weeping and wailing." 

" June 15th. — It was my turn to preach again this afternoon. 
Succeeded very much to my dissatisfaction. I always feel sick 
of my productions while delivering them, they seem to fall so 
powerless and pointless. I feel like throwing them in the fire." 

"June 24.1/1. — Another miserable, sleepless night. This habit- 
ual inability to sleep is wearing upon me. Went to the doctor 
this morning for morphine powders ; took two, and managed to 
sleep two hours." 

" June 2}th. — Another sleepless night." 

So ended another year, with its sad prophecy of sleepless 
nights and w r eary days. On the whole, this year was much 
3 



34 N. A. STAPLES. 

more satisfactory to him than the preceding. The morbid 
fancies that possessed him at YVestfield, and for a long time 
after, had seen fit to depart. In the teachings of Professor 
Huidekoper, and still more in his personality, he found much 
to admire ; and by Dr. Stebbins' careful preparation for his 
duties and conscientious discharge of them, he was continu- 
ally admonished of his own necessities in these directions. 
Even while appealing from his teachings, he submitted to 
the spell of his contagious earnestness. His studies were 
much more to his taste than formerly ; he had given himself 
to them without stint. His collateral reading in metaphy- 
sics, moral philosophy, and history, opened to him new worlds 
of thought and information. Moreover, he began to smell 
the battle of preaching afar off, and his sermons were writ- 
ten with great care and wrestlings of the spirit. Having 
prepared them carefully, he gave equal care to their delivery, 
studying elocution with great fervor and delight, and laying 
in hard work the foundations of his subsequent skill as an 
extempore speaker. His sermons for the most part were 
deep-rooted in his personal experience. One of the first of 
them was on amusement, and preached a Gospel on that 
subject which at that time was very rare, and heterodox in 
the extreme. It is clear that this sermon grew out of his 
own love of sport, and the attempt which he made to drive 
it out with a pitchfork, only to see it coming back as vigor- 
ous as ever. At last he began to suspect that "when God 
made him he meant him." Here is the base of his position. 

lt The evil which attaches to any institution or course of ac- 
tion is not a sufficient reason in itself for rejecting it. If it is. I 
cannot see where we are to stop until we have cast out alike all 
human recreation and employment, for none are free from it. 
Evil is of two kinds, necessary and accidental. The former 



LIFE AT MEADVILLE. 



35 



arises from the nature of a course ; the latter from the manner 
in which it is operated. In one case evil must arise, in the 
other it may. One is always wrong, the other may be right. 
The former one ought to exterminate, the latter one ought to 
purify ; and the great work which the Christian moralist has to 
do with society is to distinguish the two and point out their 
evils and dangers, not to denounce all indiscriminately ; to cor- 
rect and reform the one, to overwhelm and destroy the other. 
Now I think it can be shown that the abuse of amusement is 
wholly accidental. That it arises not from its nature, but 
from its bad management." 

Another of his Meadville sermons, the third, deals with 
the subject of Reforms. It is wonderfully prudent, consider- 
ing how deeply his heart was interested in the reforms of 
the day, and shows he was at this time no stranger to the 
art of persuasion. The false conservative and the false 
radical he describes with admirable precision. He finds 
that two elements enter into every successful reform — cor- 
rectness of principle and fitness of time ; and applying these 
last to the anti-slavery reform, decides in favor of its princi- 
ple, and declares that its time has come. Except here, I do 
not myself remember to have ever heard that test of tem- 
poral fitness applied to a reform to any purpose except that 
of damning it. Nor even here is sufficient allowance made 
for the fact that the best way of finding out whether a re- 
form is timely is to see if it will go. The failure will be 
timely at any rate. 

But the best of all his Meadville sermons, alike as the ex- 
ponent of his power and his position, is a sermon on Rever- 
ence. At that early day he made accurate thinking rather 
than fine writing the mark of his high calling. He realized 
as clearly as James Russell Lowell that " illustrations should 



$6 N. A. STAPLES. 

be windows and not blinds ;" and in all his sermons there is 
not an illustration introduced for its own sake, nor one 
which does not help to elucidate his subject. His position 
at this time was not radical, but decidedly progressive. The 
gist of his sermon on Reverence is contained in the follow- 
ing passage : 

"Place before men worthy objects of reverence ; strip the 
church of her bigotry and superstition. Do not attribute to 
God that which we would not respect in man. Do not claim 
infallibility for the letter of a self-contradictory record. Do not 
claim perfection for imperfect Christians. This is the only 
hope of the church. It has no longer the rack and the hang- 
man to guard it. Its work is the only ground upon which it 
can now claim the respect of mankind." 

His first immediate impressions of Theodore Parker were 
not very flattering, but they reveal the liberal attitude of 
his mind. 

"7 u fy 9^h 1853. — Was introduced to Dr. Hall, of Provi- 
dence. On our way to Cambridge was introduced to Theodore 
Parker. He does not show his greatness in his face — has an 
unpleasant expression. When he left the omnibus, Dr. Hall 
said to Mr. Ryder, so loud that all could hear him, 'There ! 
you have seen the elephant' I do not like the way men feel 
themselves privileged to speak of Mr. Parker. I respect the 
man, though I have no sympathy with his peculiar doctrines." 

" 7 u fy 24//*, Sunday. — I felt my weakness and boyishness 
before I went to church, and during the preliminary services. 
During my sermon forgot myself more. I felt as if I wanted 
to nestle close to God, as if he would care for me and do the 
best thing possible for my growth. I consecrate my powers to 
him." 

"August St/i. — Have left my gloves somewhere, and my coat 
at Nantucket. Must be more careful." 



LIFE AT MEADVILLE. 37 

"August 16th. — Received a letter from Mr. Sturgis, of New- 

Y:rk, [who had befriended him financially.] stating that as 

soon as he found that his letter had obliged me to go into a 

relation of personal matters, he closed and returned it at once. 

s a man" 

" August 21st. — Mr. S took my hand and said that was 

a first-rate sermon. So Mr. H . I am sure this all seems 

pleasant enough, but I could improve more when the praise 

s less unqualified. I hope M will always continue to 

be faithful in expressing his views of my sermons." 

"August 24J/1. — This is my birth-day again — it is astonishing 
how they come around; twenty-three years old to-day. If I 
have any consolation it is in hoping I have laid some deep 
foundations upon which character may permanently rest. If 
so, if God is a more real presence to me, if religion is more a 
part of my thoughts and feeling, if the Christian virtues are the 
medium through which I look upon and act toward others, then 
no wonder it can not be seen. These things must be acquired 
t y silent labor in that inner temple where no friends applaud, 
no world frowns, no other presence is but the Great Eternal. 
I hardly dare hope that I have accomplished this, but I do 
trust that some tendency has been given to my thoughts and 
character in this last year. I have enjoyed much and suffered 

but little. I have enjoyed a great deal I fear I have 

not been as thankful as I ought for this. The blessing is so 
great I can hardly grasp it only at times ; I pray I may have 
a greater appreciation of it, and may associate the enjoyment I 
receive from it more with the goodness and love of God." 

"September 4//1. — Meadville again. I want to see more of 
the Transcendental Philosophy. 

" S:::-:mber 2&t?i. — This evening Carlton preached the best 
sermon he ever preached, in the Hall. I do find a most hate- 
~ ful feeling of envy or ambition rising in me w T hen I hear a good 
sermon. I feel determined to beat it at once. I felt this while 
hearing Carlton's sermon, I do pray that all such feeling may 
be taken away from my hear:. 



38 N. A. STAPLES. 

"October 31st. — There is no use in trying to superinduce 
feeling faster than it is disposed to come from real interest." 

" Dece??iber Jt/i. — Awoke this morning with the thought ol 
my unfinished lecture. Worked hard throughout the day, and 
at night had nothing done. This evening resolved to dictate 
to Margaret, and get her to assist me in clearing up my mud- 
dled thoughts. I did so, and felt better at once. The whole 
subject came out in fresh colors and new interest." 

The habit thus begun was never given up. The labor 
of writing became more painful to him every year, as the 
wreck of his nervous system increased ; and at last became 
absolute torture. The greater part of his Brooklyn sermons 
were dictated to his wife; a few to an amanuensis. He 
would begin them himself, but would very soon grow 
weary. Some of his letters to Collyer are written with a 
writing-machine of which he had great hopes. The result 
is an astonishing resemblance to Collyer's own chirography. 

"December 23d. — Mary C. gave me a nice knife for a Christ- 
mas gift. If I had any money of my own I should enjoy giving 
presents, but I have only two cents." 

<• Jamtary 3d, 1854. — Dr. S. said an old lady told him that 
an expression in my sermon at Austinburg was the first word 
of consolation she had ever received to cheer her in her home 
duties. It does me an unspeakable amount of good to find 
there is a reality in preaching, after all." 

" April gt/i. — I think he assumed too much of a belligerent 
attitude in preaching even to sinners. They do not sacrifice 
their claims to courtesy by being such. I think his tone in 
prayer is not simple enough, although his spirit is earnest and 
sincere. I love an entire want of any attempt to be eloquent 
in prayer." 

" June zWi. — What a day this has been. Full of rich expe- 
rience and pleasant memories — a day that has made its impress 



LIFE AT MEADVILLE. 39 

on my soul. This evening, H. W. Beecher held a large crowd 
enchained ; there is no need of my saying one word about it 
here, for it is more plainly written upon my heart. He has 
aroused all the thunder in my soul, and I should like to preach 
to-morrow upon the strength of the inspiration." 

" J7i7ie 2()t7i. — This afternoon our themes were given before 
agood audience. They averaged well. Mine was well re- 
ceived. Was grieved to hear some persons speak of it as a 
fine performance. Oh ! I pray for that spiritual elevation which 
looks right above every thing else and says, ' Father, thou 
knowest' " 

" June 2,0th. — When I awoke this morning and thought I no 
longer had any teachers, and should never again be a pupil, I 
could have cried over the sense of loneliness and responsi- 
bility." 

And so the sweet, sad, blessed school-life ended, and the 
sweeter, sadder, and more blessed ministry began. 



III. 

LIFE IN LEXINGTON. 

After his graduation, Mr. Staples lingered in Meadville 
a few days that he might be with Carlton on his wedding 
day, which the whole land celebrated, for it was " the glo- 
rious Fourth," and then went East to fulfill engagements he 
had made to preach in various places. During his last year 
in the school, his progress had been a delight to himself and 
an astonishment to all his friends, not more in the quality 
of his thought than in his power of presenting it. Wher- 
ever he went, he was well received ; but two places, Water- 
town and Lexington, soon stood out from all the others as 
claimants for his ministry. It cost him a sore struggle to 
decide between them. His journal bears the marks of it at 
every page. The Watertown people offered him much the 
larger salary; and as he was not one of those persons to 
whom money sticks, and was himself aware that he was not, 
this was no small temptation. But he was afraid of fostering 
his ambition, and, moreover, his sympathies were always 
immediately enlisted on the side of the weaker party, 
which in this case happened to be Lexington, the people 
there having little hope of getting him after the Watertown 
society called him. For these reasons, and because there 
was an atmosphere investing Lexington made up of revolu- 
tionary memories, and memories of Theodore Parker, and 
certain very attractive people, he resolved to go there. The 
society was that of which Theodore Parker was a birthright 
member, and in spite of the proverb about a prophet's lack of 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON. 4 1 

honor in his own country, it had invited him to be its minis- 
ter a dozen years before. The ordination of Mr. Staples 
was on the 20th September, 1854; but this great event was 
preceded by one greater. 

" Scpte?nber ^th. — I have little to write this day ; for when I 
feel the most I say the least. We were married this morning at 
7 o'clock." 

" Septe?Jiber 20th. — This morning everybody was delighted to 
see as fair a day as ever blessed the earth. At nine o'clock, I met 
the council at the Lexington House. A large number were as- 
sembled. After a few questions, and discharging other business, 
we proceeded to the church, where we listened to services 
which were complete ; Mr. Huntingdon's sermon, the best I 
ever heard from him ; the ordaining prayer by Calvin Lincoln, 
the very breath of heaven. The charge by Freeman Clarke 
was just what he always does ; he never outdoes himself. The 
right hand of fellowship by Abbot Smith, of West Cambridge, 
was good, cordial, and appropriate ; the address by Thomas 

Hill, of Waltham, perfect It has been a solemn and 

impressive, but a very happy day. I have felt nothing new. I 
had anticipated every feeling in the one conviction, that in God 
my weakness is strength. I do not shrink from the work 
before me. I feel equal to it — that I shall answer some purpose 
here, and in proportion as I live in harmony with God's will, I 
shall succeed. I trust my all to him." 

The work thus pleasantly begun, was prosecuted with the 
utmost vigor and enthusiasm. The time spent in Lexington 
was the idyllic period of his life. He always idealized his 
friends ; and the Lexington society, without being idealized, 
was a very interesting group of people. He loved them 
passionately, and served them most devotedly. One man, 
Charles Hudson, stood put from all the rest as his chief 
friend and counselor. He could have had no wiser and no 



42 N. A. STAPLES. 

better friend. His mind was a storehouse of information 
and ideas, to which he had continual recourse. He remem- 
bered with ever deepening gratitude until his dying day, the 
sympathy and encouragement which he received from this 
cultivated and great-hearted man. 

While in Lexington, Mr. Staples gave a good deal of 
thought to organization. One of his first acts was to draw 
up a creed and covenant. He could bear no dead branches 
on any tree of his tending, and so was determined to 
make something out of the church as distinguished from the 
society. His efforts were appreciated, and rewarded with 
every outward semblance of success. A great many persons 
joined the church. His journal is continually recording 
these little triumphs. The majority of his communicants 
were young people ; in particular, a whole flock of beautiful 
young girls. The secret of this success was no doubt his 
personal magnetism. His disciples believed in him just as 
the disciples of old believed in Jesus, and consequently were 
ready to believe or do almost anything that he wished them 
to. Besides this, he idealized the communion service, and 
made it something very different from the cold-blooded, 
conventional affair it is in the majority of churches. 

His journal further indicates that he was a good pastor ; 
that he had a great deal of parochial work to do, and did it 
faithfully. Sickness and death among his people came home 
to him as if they were in his own family, and they came 
home to him very often. All through his journal is the 
sound of funeral bells. In this respect, Lexington was like 
a great many New-England towns from which the fresh 
young life has gone away, leaving a population of which 
many are old or feeble. These sorrowful experiences ex- - 
hausted him in a fearful manner. The spontaneous out- 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON, 43 

pouring of his sympathy was a greater tax upon his vital 
energies than any conscious effort in the way of study or 
writing. 

" October \oth. — A couple came to be married this evening. 
Have now gone the rounds of my profession — done a little of 
every thing." 

" October i/^th. — It is a blessing to live here. My cup run- 
neth over. May God's pure spirit enter my soul ! I want to 
be faithful to these people." 

" October 21st. — Had a full church meeting this evening. It 
was satisfactory and encouraging. . . . They adopted a simple 
creed which I had drawn up." 

This was Saturday evening. The next day he preached 
on " Christianity, the religion of daily life." " That was a 
real Parker sermon," said one of his people, who was one of 
Mr. Parker's adherents. The same sermon he entirely re- 
wrote in Milwaukee and again in Brooklyn, and as it was 
preached in Brooklyn it was one of his best sermons. Many 
of his sermons ran through his whole ministry. Once cer- 
tain that he had a living thought he could never be quite 
satisfied with his expression of it, but wanted to be continu- 
ally recasting it. And as with the general drift of his ser- 
mons, so with particular sentences. His manuscript sermons 
are so many palimpsests, they are so interlined and re-inter- 
lined with corrections. This is much more so with his own 
writing than with the portions dictated to others. It was 
with him a good deal as with Coleridge, who, with pen in 
hand, felt a thousand checks and difficulties in the expres- 
sion of his meaning, but never the smallest hitch or impedi- 
ment in the fullest utterance of his abstrusest thoughts and 
most subtle fancies by word of mouth. He accused himself 
of difficulty of expression, and accounted for the difficulty 



44 N. A. STAPLES. 

by his lack of early training. But the difficulty was in satis- 
fying his own standard of fineness and accuracy. Had he 
been as easily satisfied as most men are, he would have 
found no difficulty. It is interesting to trace the growth 
in his thought through the changes in his manuscripts. The 
changes are almost never in the interest of euphony but 
in the interest of thought — to please his mind and not to 
please his ear. If he was a little too anxious to surpass others, 
he was always a great deal more anxious to surpass himself. 
His sense of power was nothing like complacency. What 
he had done always seemed little to him in comparison with 
what he ought and meant to do. 

"December 14th. — Have been pumping for a Christmas ser- 
mon, but the well is dry and the boxes loose. It starts hard." 

"December 14th. — Mr. and Mrs. B called. Mr. B is 

one piece of good cheer. He has thrown an idea into the well 
with which I think I can bring up a sermon." 

"December i$th. — Still pumping for a Christmas sermon. 
Boxes squeak and the water low." 

"February iSth, 1855. — Preached in Boston to-day; in the 
evening went to hear J. F. Clarke. He preached upon the 
duty of resisting wicked laws. There was nothing very new or 
striking in his discourse, but it stirred in us both many strong 
feelings. There is a restraint which I feel upon these subjects 
which chafes me badly, and yet somebody must influence my 
people. I pray for guidance. Margaret sees the whole thing 
in its true light. She is true blue ; and as independent as you 
please. I wish that I had more of her feeling." 

" February 2.0th. — Have read Dr. 's sermon before the 

Governor and Council, and was so disgusted with its conserva- 
tive spirit, I sat down immediately and wrote to Garrison to 
send me the Liberator." 

"March ^d. — Oh the unspeakable joy of having a home of 
my own !" 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON. 45 

" April 20th. — If my work was not God's work I should feel 
discouraged." 

" April 27th. — Have been with the Clarkes to Brooke farm. 
The day cold and windy. We strolled about that place of 
disappointed hopes. A spirit of sadness seemed to linger 
around the deserted cottages — cellars filled with ruins — fields 
wanting not in beauty or richness, but needing the culture of a 
hand that can say, * they are mine !' All was interesting, though 
sad. I can not describe the feelings which pressed upon me. 
I fancied those tired poets returning to their plain homes, and 
trying to believe it was pleasant." 

" June 17 th. — Preached upon the sphere of the pulpit. Said 
some very plain things, but the people bore it nobly. Think I 
touched more consciences than ever before." 

" June 23d. — Have spent a pleasant day taking father and 
mother around. They seem much delighted with everything. 
I dread to-morrow ; to preach before them is trying in the ex- 
treme." 

" June 2\th. — Father seems to have been much pleased with 
the services." 

" June 26th. — I never expected to receive my parents in so 
blessed a home. God has been gracious to me indeed. My 
life is like a dream. Strange, strange that I should be so 
blessed !" 

" September 23^. — Preached my first anniversary sermon to 
a very full house. Endeavored to tell the people what we 
ought to do, as well as congratulate them on what we have 
done. My text : i Rejoice with fear and trembling.' Am very 
tired, and feel the need of rest." 

" October 2-$d. — Listened to a sermon by Oliver Stearns, which 
was a burning fire, but a little tinctured with a foggy theology, 
which desires to throw around the character of Christ a mystery 
that does not belong to it. If we once admit that the power 
of Christ — whatever it may be — was delegated, which all but 
Trinitarians must do, why not suppose power enough to make 



46 N. A. STAPLES. 

him equal to whatever work he had to perform without any 
miraculous connection of the Father with him ?" 

" October Zth. — Mr. H. tells me there is some uneasiness 
felt about my last Sunday's sermon. I do not care ; should 
prefer to give satisfaction, but if I can not by preaching the 
truth as I see it, it must go." 

"December \\th. — Had a talk with Ellen about this world 
being an unhappy one." 

Of course he did not think it was, for only three days be- 
fore, his first child, Frederick Augustus, had opened his eyes 
in the house, and lighted it up with a strange glory. Great 
was his joy in this new comer, and in the little ones that 
came after, Fanny and Carrie to just taste the earth and go, 
and Cora Collyer, to light up for him, with her baby eyes, 
the dark valley. His home-life was intense. To miss it for 
a day was dreadful pain to him, to take it up again a joy he 
celebrated in ways more natural than ministerial. His let- 
ters to Fred are as tender as Luther's to his " Johnny," and 
a great deal more sensible. In his intimate relations with 
" Heavenly Fahder," he found a source of deep and tender 
joy. " Well papa," said the rogue one day, w r hen he had 
come in well soaked with snow-water, " I told Heavenly 
Fahder that I didn't want so much snow round here, and 
that I w T ished he would make it come summer, but he 
wouldn't." At another time he found him making paper, 
babies, " for Heavenly Fahder to make angels out of." In 
no respect was Mr. Staples's constantly increasing nervous- 
ness more painful to him, than in its preventing him from 
always entering into and enjoying his children's pranks, 
But somehow, they seemed to know that it was not their 
father, but their father's nerves, that could not stand the 
awful racket which they sometimes made. They knew they 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON. 47 

had no better friend than he. One evening the summer 
after his death, Fred, then nine years old, was looking at a 
sunset. He called his mother to come and see how beauti- 
ful it was, She, being busily engaged in conversation with 
her sister, came and said, u Yes, it is beautiful," and contin- 
ued the conversation. He next called his aunt, who came 
and looked, and spoke in the same casual way. This was 
too much. The hot tears came rushing to his eyes, and 
burying his face in his hands, he cried out, " Oh ! I wish 
papa was here to enjoy it with me," so well did he remem- 
ber that his sympathy was never craved in vain. 

" Dece?nber 21st. — Rode into the city with Dunbar to hear 
Thackeray. He is not to be described. Is not profound. Is 
chatty, ambles along so that you cannot bear to think of his 
ever stopping. He makes you love him. Does not lecture but 
talks." 

" Mrs. A— — and Mrs. B called to talk about joining 

the church. It is curious to observe the workings of different 
characters on such occasions. Each will give expression to the 
highest thought they are capable of. Was never more struck 
with the difference in spheres than when talking with these 
two ladies. Mrs. A is kind-hearted, and has good feel- 
ings, but no higher view of religion than as being the highest 

and best form of propriety and benevolence. Mrs. B has 

been in the fire of trouble, and has become purified into a 
knowledge of the spirit, and a desire for the highest spiritual 
life." 

"February i^th, 1856. — I hope I am on the verge of some- 
thing better ; for certainly this feeling of dissatisfaction is too 
much." 

"March 29th. — If I dared flinch from preaching it (a sermon 
on intemperance) I fear I would. But my duty is plain. The 
truth must be spoken. It is hard to wound the feelings of 



48 N. A. STAPLES. 

friends, but woe is unto me if I preach not the truth. I will 
leave the consequences to him whose the truth is." 

"May 10th. — [Something having gone wrong in the choir] 
I sometimes wish I had no ear for music to be pleased or of- 
fended. But so it is. I live or die on a sweet sound or harsh. 

Mr. Staples's love of music began with his earliest years, 
and grew with his growth more discriminating, and more 
passionate every year. This love came from his father, as 
also did his first lessons. When his father was away from 
home winter evenings, the boy would go out into the moon- 
light, and wait, and wait, until he heard the first creaking 
of his sledge as it reached a neighboring hill-top, and then 
the sweet tones of his voice, singing some one of the simple 
songs of which he had a store. When he was weary there 
was nothing that rested him so much; when he was nervous 
and distracted, nothing could so soothe and quiet him. 
There could be no surer proof of his dependence on it, and 
its power over him, than that on the night of his little Car- 
rie's burial, he went to a concert, and sat there more soli- 
tary in his grief than if he had been the only person present, 
converting the sweet sounds into encouragement and resig- 
nation. At an early age he learned to play upon the flute 
and violin, and still later upon the piano. His journals 
abound with musical experiences, criticisms favorable and 
unfavorable on operas and oratorios, and great performers. 

On the twenty-first of May, this year, came the news of 
Mr. Sumner's attempted murder by Preston Brooks. Mr. 
Staples was very active in getting up an indignation meet- 
ing, one of the many that in that day of terrors were held 
throughout the North. He was delighted with the tokens 
of awakening conscience that the meeting evinced in the 
Lexington community, and for a time grew more hopeful 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON. 49 

as to his work. He had not been very hopeful during the 
Spring. He had been feeling a good deal discouraged, and 
consequently restless and uneasy. It was not from any lack 
of outward success, nor from the failure of his plans. The 
society had grown rapidly under his care ; the people were 
united upon him, with the exception of a few persons to 
whom his anti-slavery sermons were an abomination, and 
who occasionally slammed their pew-doors behind them and 
walked out of church ; though even these found it hard work 
to get along without his preaching, and soon got hungry and 
came back. The church proper had also increased ra- 
pidly. But it was evident to Mr. Staples, that his peo- 
ple liked him better than his views. Personally they 
were very fond of him, and could not do enough for him 
and his wife. But when it came to his progressive views 
of doctrine, and worship, and church-work, they did not 
sympathize with him and offer him their aid. This state of 
things was most distasteful to him. The righteous indigna- 
tion aroused by the assault on Mr. Sumner and the Kansas 
outrages encouraged him for a time ; but the trouble was 
too deep to be thus easily allayed. He was not himself 
conscious, at first, of its main source, which afterward he 
found to be the great progress he had made in thought 
since leaving Meadville, and the instinctive feeling that a 
new field was best adapted to his new ideas and designs. 
His radicalism, which had been increasing steadily, did not 
fairly come to consciousness in him until his Lexington 
ministry was a dream of the past. 

" July 27th. — Mr. Crufts came up to preach for me on an 
exchange that I had entirely forgotten. I found him in my 
pulpit when I went there. It is too bad, and I reproach myself 
severely for it." / 

4 



50 N. A. STAPLES. 

About this time Mr. Staples made an arrangement with 
Mr. Mumford, then at Detroit, which enabled him to go 
West and preach for several Sundays. He left Lexington 
on the 31st of July. On Sunday, August 17 th, he preached 
for the first time in Milwaukee, to an audience of about two 
hundred persons. The following Sunday he preached there 
again. Measures were immediately taken to secure his 
services, but he gave the people no encouragement, though 
he was deeply drawn to them. August 31st finds him 
again in his own pulpit, and glad enough to see his own 
beloved people. 

"September i$th. — Have received a letter from the Milwau- 
kee society, asking me to become their minister. It is a beau- 
tiful letter. It is hard to bring my' mind to contemplate it." 

" September ijtk. — The call from Milwaukee keeps floating 
before my mind like the memory of a dream. I somehow feel, 
without knowing why, that I shall go." 

" September 20th. — The Milwaukee phantom haunts me still. 
I grow thin thinking of it. What will become of me when I 
come to decide ? " 

" October 2?>d. — This Milwaukee matter makes us all sick at 
heart. I have concluded to resign next Sunday." 

" October 25th. — It seems as if I cannot resign." 

"Sunday, October 2jth. — The day is fine; the air soft and 
genial ; the streets so dry, it does not seem so late in the year. 
Resigned this afternoon. It was awfully solemn. I could 
hardly endure it. God bless my people and strengthen me." 

The last days at Lexington were painful in the extreme. 
A month before his departure his journal breaks off in the 
middle of a sentence, and thereafter testifies by its silence 
what bitter thoughts were passing in his mind, how full 
of tears was his great heart. Never had the people seemed 
so kind, so lovable. Had not the most influential of them 



LIFE IN LEXINGTON. 5 1 

agreed with him that it was his duty to go, it would have 
been even harder than it was to part with them. His 
throat, too, came to the assistance of his judgment, with an 
intimation that the East was no place for it. Thus, before 
leaving Lexington, he had seen the beginning of the end. 
The troubles in his head and throat were both well under 
way, and afterward were to alternate in persistent inroads 
on his health and vigor. 

His two years at Lexington were rich in culture and ex- 
perience. There he decided the great question between 
love and duty, as presented to him by the political and 
social problems of the time. It is very easy for some men 
to say all they think on these problems, because they are 
men of little feeling, who take a profound enjoyment in 
stamping upon other people's toes. Mr. Staples was not of 
this sort. He was himself very sensitive, and took for 
granted that others were pretty much the same. The ques- 
tion with him was not, as with many, between duty and 
popularity. It was between duty and love. He hated to 
wound any one. He deserves then the greater praise that at 
the risk of wounding his best friends he did his duty. There 
was never any more hesitation about that. In Milwaukee 
and in Brooklyn he declared unto his people " the whole 
counsel of God" without a moment's wavering, though 
oftentimes it hurt him more to do it than it hurt those who 
kicked against the pricks most furiously. 

Of the progress he had made in his theology, Mr. Staples 
was not himself aware till he looked back from the vantage- 
ground of a new position. But even more than in theo- 
logy, in ecclesiastical matters he had deeply changed. At 
Meadville, it will be remembered, he went to the Episcopal 
church, and thought thai; about half as much form he 



52 N. A. STAPLES. 

should like very much. At Lexington, church methods had 
for him at first no little fascination, and it was no lack of 
outward success with them that suggested their poverty. 
It was their lack of harmony with the rational and secular 
spirit of the age, of which he had become a quiet and sin- 
cere disciple. In his theology, Mr. Staples grew more 
radical until his death. But in leaving Lexington he left all 
his ecclesiasticism behind him, all his formalism. After that 
he might stand a few times more at the communion-table, 
but it w r ould be as a man, not as a priest ; he might baptize 
little children, but it would be in a purely personal and 
original, not in any ecclesiastical or sacramental w r ay. 
Henceforth society is to be his universal church; all its 
great moral forces its ministers, and he a fellow-laborer with 
these in regenerating individual and social life. Some one 
who knew him well has said of him, " He did not grow 
into radicalism ; he stepped into it all at once on going West." 
But I take it that this only means that he stepped all at 
once into clear consciousness of what had taken place in 
his convictions. The path was difficult, and he walked with 
his head down to find it, not knowing that he was ascending, 
even by the weariness. And now it w r as as if he had sud- 
denly emerged from the clouds, and, on the summit, heaven 
with all its stars lay over him. 

" With aching hands and bleeding feet 
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone ; 

We bear the burden and the heat 

Of the long day, and wish 'twere done; 

Not till the hours of light return, 

All we have built do we discern." 



IV. 

MILWAUKEE AND THE ARMY. 

The Western campaign began in December, 1856. The 
records of it are far less complete than those of his previous 
and subsequent life; or, perhaps I should say, they are 
more sacred and less reportable, being contained for the 
most part in daily letters to his wife, who was away from 
him in Meadville, St. Louis and Stapley Furnace, in the 
aggregate, a good deal. There is no journal to speak of 
until January, i860, three years after the beginning of his 
new ministry, and this continues only four or five months, 
and is more a record of his outward than of his inner life. 
In 1859 began his friendship and correspondence with 
Robert Collyer, a friendship he deeply prized, a cor- 
respondence that was to both a source of boundless culture 
and delight. Their first meeting was in Chicago, where 
Mr. Collyer was then minister at large. Mr. Staples went 
in company with Mr. Brigham to hear Mr. Collyer preach, 
and when the service was over went up with both hands 
extended to thank him for preaching so well. The extended 
hands were met and clasped, and held ever tighter and 
tighter, until death came and severed them. Never did a 
young girl with her first lover wait for his letters more im- 
patiently than Mr. Staples waited for his friend's. That one 
of them should arrive just in time to lie in the office over 
Sunday was the one piece of Sabbatarianism with which he 



54 N. A. STAPLES. 

had no patience whatever. The letters once begun grow 
more and more frequent. In Brooklyn Mr. Staples wrote 
regularly every week. But this was far from being a suffi- 
cient outlet for sympathy and affection, and sometimes 
letter follows letter day after day. On both sides the cor- 
respondence was characterized by an admirable frankness 
and sincerity. If there is mutual praise, there is also mutual 
criticism. Each loves the other so devotedly that he hates 
his faults. The motto of their friendship might have been 
in Thoreau's words : 

" Let such pure hate still underprop 
Our love, that we may be 
Each other's conscience, 
And have our sympathy 
Mainly from thence. 

" We'll one another treat like gods, 
And all the faith we have 
In virtue and in truth, bestow 
On either, and suspicion leave 
To gods below." 

But this friendship and correspondence were not in full 
bloom until after Mr. Staples left Milwaukee and went into 
the army, where, meeting Collyer in Washington, their con- 
versation was in heaven, and the sturdy shoot struck down 
its roots and up its branches, and became a tree whose 
grateful shade afforded them full many an hour of shelter 
from the glare and heat of this almost too busy w T ork-day 
world. 

The enthusiasm and earnestness that attended the form- 
ing of the Milwaukee society will always be remembered 
by the few most earnest souls that were at the time Mr. 
Staples's constant counselors and coadjutors. Mr. Staples 



MILWAUKEE AND THE ARMY. 55 

himself was full of hope and expectation. Perhaps he was 
more hopeful, or at any rate more expectant, than he had 
any right to be. In all the practical affairs of life he was a 
profound idealist. He idealized the situation in Milwaukee 
to an extent that could but pave the way for disappoint- 
ment sooner or later. Had his people been as perfect as he 
imagined them, there would have been no need of his 
preaching or of any other. He went there in a time of 
unexampled commercial prosperity, a time when even the 
poor felt rich, because they were making money rapidly. 
During the first winter he preached in a public hall, that 
was dedicated during the week to itinerant phrenologists and 
geologists, theatrical performances, prestidigitation, and so 
on. This would have troubled him sorely a few years 
before, but now that he had come to apprehend religion, 
not as a part of life, even the best part, but as the divine 
outlook, accent, inspiration of the whole, it made but little 
difference. He thought that he ought to be able to 
counteract the distracting influences of the foot-lights, and 
the diagrams, and sleight-of-hand-man's marvelous appoint- 
ments, by which he was surrounded. And truly there was 
little thought concerning these when he had once risen and 
begun to speak. There was a something in this hall-preach- 
ing that he never found in the new church in Milwaukee, 
or in the little chapel in Brooklyn. It was the heavenly gift of 
an unqualified democracy. He knew that in every commu- 
nity some of the best men are as afraid of churches as witches 
are afraid of water. And though he had no special longing 
to preach the gospel to such men, seeing that they already 
had it, he felt that he must have their fellowship and 
cooperation, and that the church which could not have 
this was condemned already. Could he have been spared 



56 N. A. STAPLES. 

a year longer in Brooklyn, his wish would doubtless have 
been gratified, for New Chapel was about as full as it could 
hold when he was taken. 

At the end of the first winter a church building was com- 
pleted, and the congregation, that had been steadily increasing 
from the beginning, went into it. Within a few months ot 
its dedication it was filled to overflowing, and after a time 
it was lengthened out by inserting a large piece in the 
middle. But the church edifice at its longest, was not the 
measure of his activity and influence. He became more 
and more a power in the city and throughout the state; 
was continually being called upon to speak on public oc- 
casions. The common people heard him gladly. He 
attracted little children to him, and young men and women, 
as a strong magnet attracts bits of steel. The lake captains, 
the foundry mechanics, the men of brawn, whose hands 
were callous with their daily toil, found his hand always 
ready for a clasp, or lift, or silent charity. It was in these 
early days that Stephen Camp, now my good fellow-worker 
in the city of Brooklyn, then a machinist in Milwaukee, 
first heard him preach. " He startled me," says Mr. Camp, 
" as with a new revelation. I said to myself, ' Why, this is 
what I have been wanting to hear all my life long, and I have 
never heard it until now ! ' " One day the machine-shop was 
exchanged for the quiet opportunities of Meadville, whither 
the love of Mr. Staples followed him, and with its timely 
praise and honest criticism did him a service for which he 
has not proved ungrateful. 

The same spirit which drove Robertson of Brighton out 
into the streets at night to seek and save those who were 
lost, was so strong in Mr. Staples, that men and women 
who had gone down into the depths, and yet longed to rise 



MILWAUKEE AND THE ARMY. 57 

out of them into a purer and a better life, were drawn to him 
instinctively ; they felt certain of his sympathy, certain that 
his faith in them would be deep enough to call upon their 
deep of character to some purpose. People who had met 
with great losses and disappointments, with dreadful hurts 
in life's promiscuous melee , gravitated to him with the unfalt- 
ering assurance of a natural law. He gave them various 
help ; money, if they needed it ; advice, if they asked for it ; 
but at all times love. It was his deep conviction that he 
had not come to be ministered unto, but to minister, and his 
conviction was for ever flowering into acts of helpfulness. 

He gave much attention to the Sunday-school, and for a 
long while took up more than half the time with general 
lessons which he prepared with great care. These contained 
food for all, teachers as well as scholars. He always had 
great faith in the possibilities of Sunday-schools, and it was a 
sore trial to him that in Brooklyn his health would not 
allow him to do what he desired in this direction. 

His sermons at this time took a wide range, busying them- 
selves much with the social and political topics of the day, 
but especially with the one then all-engrossing theme of 
slavery. The years spent at Milwaukee were the most 
dreadful of that dreadful time, when the South was violent 
and aggressive, the North vacillating and timid, when " judi- 
cial blindness" of a most dangerous sort afflicted the chief- 
justice, and James Buchanan was the tool of a pro-slavery 
cabinet. The following letter to Collyer indicates very fair- 
ly Mr. Staples's attitude. The question up is whether Mr. 
Codding, who, after witnessing a good confession, died in 
June, 1866, shall be employed as missionary by the Western 
Unitarian Conference. 

" Dear Collyer : I have been away from home, or else 



58 N. A. STAPLES. 

might have answered you sooner. I can give you my sober 
second thought about Codding in a hurry, pro and con. 

" 1st con. The funds raised are contributed by all shades of 
politics. Codding is chiefly known as an Abolitionist. 

"id con. If he is sent as a missionary to represent Unitarian" 
ism, he will necessarily give the impression that our doctrine 
embraces anti-slavery as one of its cardinal points. 

" 3rd con. The spread of our theology will thus be embar- 
rassed by a new and extraneous condition, and it meets with 
opposition enough on its own account. 

" \th con. That he is more anti-slavery than Unitarian. So 
much for the cons. The pros are : 

" 1st. The anti-slavery question is the touch-stone of moral 
soundness in this age. It is the kingdom of heaven presented 
fairly and squarely to us. Better a thousand times believe in 
Trinity, total depravity, etc., etc., than believe in human slavery, 
yea, than not positively hate and oppose it. 

" 2d. The spread of our theology ought to be limited to the 
spread of such views. It has no alliance with any other ele- 
ments." 

Other pros follow, but these two are sufficient. The same 
letter reports a very tempting call to Barton Square, Salem, 
Massachusetts, which was heroically declined, though at 
the time Mr. Staples's situation in Milwaukee was no longer 
pleasant, but on the contrary exceedingly painful and hard. 
Urgent calls to West-Roxbury, Theodore Parker's first society 
and to Worcester, Massachusetts, had already been de- 
clined. There were various reasons for this change that in 
two short years had come " o'er the spirit of his dream." 
The brilliant period of commercial prosperity that was at its 
height when the Milwaukee movement began, had been 
succeeded by a period of great depression. More than 
thirty families belonging to the congregation had, from this 
cause, been scattered in a single year. Others were alienat- 



MILWAUKEE AND THE ARMY. 59 

ed by the breadth of his theology and his freedom in avow- 
ing what he felt to be the truth. But the main cause of the 
change was undoubtedly that which operated in so many 
churches of the period, as a stone of stumbling and a rock 
of offense : his outspoken and determined opposition to the 
encroachments of the slave power. This opposition cul- 
minated in a Thanksgiving sermon preached on the 24th of 
November, 1859. It was an earnest, brilliant, and exhaust- 
ive discussion of the subject. Its title was that happy 
phrase suggested by William H. Seward, of blessed memory, 
" The Irrepressible Conflict.'' It attracted a good deal of 
attention, and was used repeatedly as a lecture during the 
winter of 1859-60, in different parts of the West. Soon 
after it -was first spoken it was printed; but between the 
speaking and the printing John Brown had made " the 
gallows in our politics what the cross is in our religion, the 
sigh and symbol of supreme self-devotedness," and in the 
printed copy the following note is inserted : 

" Since the above was written, John Brown has been hung- 
He must have known from the first that, in case his plan failed, 
the gallows was his certain doom. He had violated the laws of 
Virginia, and he must pay the penalty. He has paid it, and 
few will complain of that. It is the unenviable privilege of the 
men of to-day to pick out defects in John Brown's plan, and 
call it insane, and allow these defects to obscure every other 
feature. But posterity will soon forget all that, as it has done 
a thousand times before. His unselfish devotion to abstract 
right j his readiness to die for a great principle — this is what 
poets will sing of and history remember." 

About this time the journal is taken up again and carried 
on for about six months. 

" January 2d, i860. — Our church enters now on the fourth year 



6a N. A. STAPLES. 

of its existence. It is not so prosperous as it has been. The 
position I have taken on the slavery question is making much 
disturbance. But it has been forced upon my conscience." 

"January list. — Read Newman on The Soul this morn- 
ing. It seems to reach a deeper place within me than was ever 
before touched by a book." 

From a letter to Collyer : 

" January 30th. — I feel precisely as you do the perpetual 
pressure of a more liberal spirit against my motives of policy. 
But the choice can not remain with me much longer. Either I 
must purify my heart and trust myself to its promptings wherever 
they may goad me, or lose these swellings of inspiration entire- 
ly. Their wings are too delicate to chafe long against such 
constraining bars without being destroyed thereby. c Father, 
glorify thy truth V that is my motto. It needs great self-pros- 
tration to be guided safely by the spirit, but I believe in it fully. 
What do you think of Conway's Dial ? His fatalism disgusts 
me. A fearless, powerful mind like his needs a better anchor 
than that." 

Six months after the Milwaukee life began, came Fanny 
Shippen, May 30th, 1857, to fill a large place in his heart. 
Between him and this little daughter there was a peculiarly 
tender tie. He would sit for hours, with her upon his knee, 
writing his sermons, filling them with the child-like faith of 
which she furnished him a constant image. But before she 
was two years old, she died, not having received the promise 
that her sweet life gave from the beginning. It was a great 
disappointment to her father, and though he bore it man- 
fully, from that time his wife began to feel that many years 
were not in store for him. Her death seemed to develop 
the sadness inherent in his nature, inherent in all natures 
that have his capacity for joy. In November, 1859, came 



MILWAUKEE AND THE ARMY. 6l 

Carrie Eddowes, and her stay was even shorter than her 
little sister's. She died March 5th, i860. 

" March 6th. — To-day I have a feeling of perfect trust. All 
is well. The good God can not, will not err. He loves us, and 
our little ones are dear to him. The Father is sufficient for 
us. In him is all that we need. Jesus is no more than one 
who has borne his griefs in full faith that God loved him even 
through those very sorrows. We must do likewise." 

To his wife : 

"March 28///. — I thought often of dear little Fanny on the 
anniversary of her death. Oh that golden spirit ! Is she 
weaving our love into her soul as it grows up to angelic woman- 
hood ? What a large part of her father's life she carried with 
her ! It can not be our little cherubs will forget us, since all the 
beginning they had to grow from was in us. Their memory is 
very sweet, and seems to sanctify our lives. We have done 
something worth all our sorrow in giving the darlings exist- 
ence. 

" Last Sunday I had the most singular experience that I 
have ever had. The day was cold and gray, and the clouds 
seemed full of despair, and so was my soul. Never did I feel 
any thing so like remorse. I lost all hope and courage. This 
lasted until five o'clock. In revolving in my mind what I could 
do, there flashed upon me a resolution to turn all this energy, 
even of despair, into the discharge of duty, and instantly came 
relief. All was bright in a moment, and such exceeding peace 
I never felt before. It was almost palpable." 

To his wife : 

" I have always felt that we make too much of death. It 
, can not work any great change in us nor in those we love. We 
and they must be the same after death as before, so that chil- 
dren dead are ours still, as much as those that are living." 

During his last year in Milwaukee, Mr. Staples suf- 



62 



N. A. STAPLES. 



fered a great deal from ill-health. The trouble in his 
throat which had made his leaving Lexington a little 
easier, came back, and the trouble in his head which he 
had had in Meadville, but from which he was compara- 
tively free in Lexington, now caused him many sleepless 
nights and days of terrible prostration. Yet, at this very 
time, he often boasts about his health, and speaks about his 
" splendid muscle," being apparently unable to distinguish 
between nervous and real strength. His weight assisted the 
illusion, being at this time one hundred and eighty pounds. 
A year later, in Brooklyn, this had already changed, and in 
Milwaukee could not have indicated health. But from first 
to last, Mr. Staples suffered from ill-health to an extent that 
would make nine men out of ten vote themselves invalids at 
once. He whistled loud to keep his courage up. He 
would not allow to himself that he was a sick man. He 
hoped against hope, till to hope any longer was impossible ; 
and this he did because he felt he had a work to do, and 
longed to do it; but even more than for this reason — for 
he felt certain that he should not stop working at the parting 
of the worlds — he cultivated hope and cheer for the sake 
of his friends. He was so certain of their love that he knew 
they could not bear to part w r ith him, and he did not want 
them to anticipate his death a day sooner than he could 
help. At the very last, when Collyer and his brother Carl- 
ton were coming to see him, and he knew how they would 
be shocked at his appearance, his heart fairly ached for them. 
In his journals he is much more apt to speak of his good 
health than of his bad. But some things would not be left 
out, and to me the greatest wonder of his life is that his ser 
mons were always healthy, whatever his condition, that he 
wrote his words of deepest and most central calm when 



MILWAUKEE AND THE ARMY. 6$ 

every nerve was on the rack. His favorite anodynes were 
books, read to him by the voices of friends. If left to him- 
self, his restless brain refused to let him sleep. His mind 
always seemed quickened by physical prostration; perhaps 
the best sermon he ever wrote was written from his dic- 
tation, when he was too weak to sit up ; but by such ab- 
normal activity, of course, the weakness was continually in- 
creased. A book read by another would take him out of 
himself and into the land of dreams, when, so that the 
silence might not waken him, the reading still went on. 

The winter of 1 860-61 was not propitious to the health 
of a man thus constituted. Lincoln had been elected, but 
a Union-saving spasm shook the North, and the Crittenden 
compromise was put to its pale lips as the only means by 
which recovery could be effected. With Mr. Staples the 
troubles of his country were his own, and he was hardly less 
a martyr in her cause than if he had died in the field, so 
wearing on him was his anxiety in her behalf. He set his 
face as a flint against every form of compromise, and great 
was his joy when the 4th of March arrived and found the 
North still uncommitted to any questionable line of policy. 

1 Dear Collyer : Let us thank the dear God that our Pre- 
sident is in the White House, and has been spared to give his 
grand inaugural. 

a I thank you for your juicy note. It was the first I ever 
received that carried on the face of it such pure and discriminat- 
ing appreciation ; not praise, not flattery. For years and years 
I have labored on, feeling a divine life burning brightly at my 
heart, and conscious of seeing large nuggets of truth, but as no 
one ever acknowledged any worth or pertinence in what I said, 
or aspired to, I thought myself mistaken. 

" Your approval of whaft I said was, and still is, a great sur- 



64 N. A. STAPLES. 

prise to me. I felt all the while I was preaching that perhaps 
I was provoking your antagonism ; but your repeated assur- 
ances, and my absolute faith in you, leave me no room to doubt 
that my thought is congenial to your own, and there are few 
things in the world which- could afford me so much solid plea- 
sure. And yet a dozen pages of bitter opposition would not 
humble me so much as your genial approbation. 

* I do not wonder at your brotherly hint. I was crazy at Fond 
du Lac, as indeed I always am when I see you — as different 
from the staid man who is now writing as you can imagine. I 
am perfectly conscious of the danger of which you speak. It 
is a wild rollicking of untamed nature, which now and then will 
out. You have no idea how irrepressible it is. But it is no 
part of my better self, and does not in the least enter into what 
I am. Still it is not the less wrong for that. You mistake, 
however, to think that it is growing on me. It is certainly 
dying. It used to be a perfect deviltry in me, and for many 
years I have fought it bravely. But now and then murder will 
out." 

Those who knew Mr. Staples w T ell will know at once what 
he refers to in the latter part of this letter, his tumultuous 
spirit of fun, his keen sense of the ridiculous at all times and 
in all places, his skill in describing and imitating with voice, 
look and manner, the laughable peculiarities of other people. 
Doubtless, some people thought that these things argued 
lack of spirituality. On the contrary, they were probably 
the sign of it. At any rate, in many notable cases like 
things have been concomitant w T ith the largest spirituality. 
It was so in Parker's case and in Luther's, and with Saint 
Philip Neri. As there was no malice in Parker's fun, which ' 
by the hour convulsed his Sunday evening visitors, so was 
there not in Mr. Staples's. But it was doubtless true of him 
that he did not have it under very good control, and that at 
times it ran away with him. 



MILWAUKEE AND THE ARMY. 65 

The first part of this letter points at the real trouble — real 
to him at any rate — which he felt in Milwaukee. It was 
that he found there no general appreciation of what he knew 
was his best thought and life. That " no one had ever ac- 
knowledged any worth or pertinence in what he said or 
aspired to " was true of neither Lexington nor Milwaukee, 
though for the moment it seemed so in comparison with 
Collyer's perfect sympathy and appreciation. There were a 
few who took him at his best, asked him for his best. There 
were many who admired him personally. But there were 
also many who admired in him what he knew was not his 
best and deepest side, and their admiration was a constant 
premium on his unfaithfulness to his clearest light and 
brightest vision. The recognition which he wanted was 
recognition of what he knew was his real worth as such, not 
any superficial admiration. Furthermore, there were little 
annoyances connected with the practical management of 
the society on which his nature fretted as a brook against a 
stone, yet made no music that he then could hear. Such, 
with others that I have already named, were his reasons for 
leaving Milwaukee. Yet his final resolve to do so was taken 
suddenly, and was abruptly broken to his people. In June, 
he preached in Brooklyn, but hardly as a candidate for set- 
tlement. In July, a commission was offered him as chaplain 
in the Sixth Regiment, Wisconsin Volunteers, which, after a 
long and careful consideration, he accepted on the ioth of 
the month, at the same time resigning his position as minis- 
ter of the Milwaukee society. The pain it cost him to do 
this is evinced by the silence of his journal, which was now 
again taken up. There is not one word about it beyond the 
simple statement of the fact. The whole matter was un- 
speakably painful to him{ He felt as if his whole ministry 

5 



66 N. A. STAPLES. 

had gone for nothing, a feeling from which his brother, who 
succeeded him, eloquently appealed in a sermon preached 
to the Milwaukee people the Sunday after Nahor's death. 
I can not do better than to sum up the results of his Mil- 
waukee life in the words of that sermon. 

" Yet in no sense can his ministry here be regarded as a fail- 
ure, though I have sometimes thought this was the view he then 
took of it. On the contrary, it was a marked success. During 
those two years the society lost a class of people who are never 
of much value except as they help to fill up the pews. It lost 
those who are never willing a minister should utter what he 
believes to be true and right when it crosses their political pre- 
judices or selfish interests, who will support him as long as he 
preaches what does not relate to their sins, but will condemn 
and shun him if he applies the truths of the Gospel to their con- 
duct. The society lost those who go to a church because it is 
on the wave of popularity, and it will advance their interests in 
business to be seen there, or who go to hear some new and 
startling thing said — all this class, never to be relied on in the 
hour of trial, always found wanting when their help is needed 
most, deserted it. These people, and those who had more re- 
gard for the minister than for the cause he represented, have 
very little value in the permanent growth of a church, and their 
loss to us is not to be taken into account in considering this 
matter of success. 

" But if that discipline which draws out all the latent powers 
of mind and spirit ; if a wide and lasting influence, won by the 
force of his talents and his devotion to his work ; if the awaken- 
ing of high and generous purposes in others, the strengthening 
of their souls in trouble, doubt and fear, and the upbuilding of 
their faith in a God of infinite mercy and tenderness, and a life 
of endless progress beyond the grave ; if the firm planting of a 
liberal church in a community deeply prejudiced against its doc- 
trines, and the winning for those doctrines a wide and respect- 
ful hearing in the State by the eloquence with which he pre- 



MILWAUKEE AND THE ARMY. 67 

sented them, and the ardor with which he labored for them ; if 
a work done for the poor, the erring, the forsaken in this city, 
which will cause his name to be long remembered with grati- 
tude and affection ; if these be the evidences of true success, 
then he won it fully in his ministry here. 

" And so it appeared to him at last. In the closing days, 
when he sat in the shadow of the great change that was coming 
— or rather, when the light of the opening day shone backward 
soft and beautiful on all his course — he saw his trials, his dis- 
appointments, his sorrows, transfused with the glory of infinite 
wisdom and love, and felt that all had been well — that all was 
needed to chasten and purify his hopes. ' I was led in the 
right way,' he said, ' disciplined for a higher life, and a larger 
and better influence. That church offers a great and promising 
field of usefulness. In it I made my best attainments, and did 
my best work. They are a generous and appreciative people.' 
The hard and bitter things of his experience here had been 
touched, softened and glorified, by his faith that God was ever 
working in him and through him ; his disappointments had 
been swallowed up in the triumphs to which they led the way. 
Your expressions of love and respect alone lingered in his 
memory, to brighten and cheer the closing hours. His last 
thoughts of you were of great tenderness ; of the trials and 
joys which he had shared with you, the holy ties which bound 
you to him and him to you, and which the approach of death only 
strengthened, and made him feel would survive all change, and 
live eternally in the purer air of heaven." 

At the beginning of his army journal, Mr. Staples states 
his reasons for going to the war in the capacity of chaplain. 
They are : 

" I. The hope of doing something to sanctify this cause in the 
hearts of the soldiers and the community from which they go, 
and make them if possible worthy of so great a mission. 

" II. Because every interest of church and state is concentra- 
ted in the success of our cause, and this fact should be impressed 
upon soldiers and people. 



6S N. A. STAPLES. 

"III. Because some one of position and influence should go 
with such a body of men, whose special duty it is to keep 
himself and others human in the midst of war's savage neces- 
sities. 

" IV. That by associating with the common soldier and gain- 
ing his confidence, I may do something to convince him of the 
deep reality of tlie spirit and her wants. 

" V. That I may be of service to the soldier's friends at home ; 
a mediator between his new life and the old. 

"VI. That I may speak words of courage and hope to these 
eleven hundred men, keeping ever before them, as far as I can, 
the fact that God is very near them always. I put the speaking 
last, because I think it belongs there. 

" VII. Although I shall make no attempt to proselyte, the hope 
that our faith, so dear to me, may be honored through my fidel- 
ity has had something to do toward strengthening my purpose 
to enlist." 

In this straightforward, simple manner did he accept his 
task, and in like manner did he bear himself while it contin- 
ued. But his chaplaincy fell upon an evil place and time. 
His regiment was posted near Washington, when McClel- 
lan was just entering on his career of masterly inactivity. 
We had had rashness, and now caution was to take its place. 
How long Mr. Staples would have fretted under that costly 
and terrible experiment we do not know ; for his health soon 
began to grow worse very rapidly, and he applied for and 
obtained his discharge. He went back to Milwaukee unable 
to speak above a whisper. But the voice then so feeble was 
to rally once more for a brief space, and then for ever cease, 
save as its echoes would for some time longer haunt full 
many a loving heart. 

The one great good that came from Mr. Staples's army 
life was the reenforcement of the friendship between him 
and Colly er by many days and nights of sweetest interchange 
of thought and aspiration. 



BROOKLYN. 

In July, 1 86 1, while -he was at Washington, Mr. Staples 
received a call from the Second Unitarian society in Brook- 
lyn. The society had been without a pastor for some time, 
and was not in a flourishing condition. Mr. Longfellow's 
ministry of seven years had been very successful, but its 
success was of the sort that must be measured by the plumb- 
line, not by the surface-level. He had gathered about him 
a little band of faithful souls, and had nurtured in them a 
spiritual life that would be to his successors an unfailing 
source of quiet inspiration. But the same stumbling-blocks 
that Mr. Staples had encountered in Milwaukee, Mr. Long- 
fellow had encountered in Brooklyn. His pronounced 
radicalism in theology and politics hindered the lateral 
growth of the society, but made it strike down its roots the 
more deeply. Never did any preacher, coming into a new po- 
sition, find a better nucleus awaiting him than Mr. Staples 
found in Brooklyn. He accepted the call of the society on 
condition that he should not enter upon his duties until he 
had taken a deeper draught of army life. 

In the month of August, an effort was made by outside 
parties, who were not perhaps aware how far the matter be- 
tween Mr. Staples and the society had gone, to effect the 
settlement of Rev. W. H. Channing, who was at that time 
in this country. Somehow it got to the ears of Mr. Staples, 
who wrote at once to Mr. Mills, as follows : 



70 N. A. STAPLES. 

" My Dear Friend : — I can easily see how your interest in me 
may have sadly embarassed you in regard to securing Mr. Chan- 
ning. It was an opportunity of which you knew nothing when 
you called me, and therefore I beg of you to consider my call 
as no call until you have heard that great and good man. If 
you can get Mr. C, don't fail to do so. He is a ripe man, 
and I a growing boy ; and I would gladly and joyfully withdraw 
that such an one might be your guide and teacher." 

But Mr. Channing's preaching, though most excellent, 
did. not produce a change of heart, and in September we find 
Mr. Staples arranging for a speedy settlement. 

From a letter to Mr. Mills : 

"September igt/t, 1861. — Dortt expect too much of me. If 
we come together as pastor and people, let it be for better and 
for worse. My hope is in the Spirit, a hope that if I am very 
sincere and single and pure-hearted, God will show me wonder- 
ful things out of his love, which will feed my people, and beautify 
their lives. As to the installation, we shall have, I presume, no 
differences of opinion. Write and tell me the circumstances of 
Longfellow's installation, and what gave rise to the controversy 
about it. Perhaps a principle was at stake ; if so, let us keep 
what was then won." 

Mr. Frothingham preached the installation sermon, and 
one of the brethren confuted it in the installation prayer. 
But. on the whole, the occasion was pleasant, though far less 
significant to Mr. Staples than he had found the like at Lex- 
ington. At Milwaukee he had refused to be installed, and 
only consented in Brooklyn out of good nature. The right 
hand of fellowship by Dr. Farley is dwelt on in his journal 
and in a letter to Collyer as the most tender and satisfactory 
word that managed to get spoken. 

"Sunday, November 10th. — Preached my first sermon as pas- 



BROOKLYN. 7 1 

tor. It was from the text, ' Stand in awe and sin not ; commune 
with your own heart and be still' After the sermon I said 
substantially, ' My friends : my parishioners : It is the custom 
of pastors on the occasion of their first sermon in a place to 
state what they intend to do, and mark out for themselves and 
their people a programme of action for the future. I have none 
such. It would be hard for me to name any special thing, the 
success or failure of which I shall deem an indication of our 
success or failure as a church. I have but one plan, and that is 
to do the best I can under all circumstances, and if through the 
success or the failure of many little plans I can help you to live 
true manly and womanly lives, cheered and strengthened by 
this still strong religion of the heart, I shall succeed in all I 
undertake.' 

Thus on the very threshold of his Brooklyn ministry did 
Mr. Staples grasp with prophetic insight the clew to all his 
future action. He began right. He had come to himself, 
and said, " I will arise and go to my Father," and he found 
that Father waiting for him on every hand, seeing him 
while he was yet a great way off, and running to meet him 
in the persons of grown men and women, young men and 
maidens, and little children who fell upon his neck and 
kissed him on the slightest provocation. Heretofore his 
preaching had been objective ; he had sought for this or 
that object in the community to preach at or preach for. 
Xow it was to be subjective. He was to seek for truth in 
his own soul, seek to express himself, trusting that good 
would come of it. This method of preaching from the cen- 
tre instead of from the circumference was the one great 
characteristic of Mr. Staples's life in Brooklyn, and the 
adoption of it was the main secret of his great success. 

For his success was great. It began with his first ser- 
mon; it increased steadily to the end of the two years 



72 N. A. STAPLES. 

that contained his active ministry, and this, too, notwith- 
standing the fact that his failing health prevented him from 
doing his legitimate social work, or at any rate from doing 
it in his best manner. His preaching was a surprise to him- 
self. New fountains seemed to open in his mind, fountains 
that were so refreshing to him that he felt they must be to 
others, and so held their waters to the lips of others with a 
noble confidence that seldom was mistaken in its object. 
Every thing was now favorable to his growth. The great 
book-stores and libraries of New-York City spread out be- 
fore him their continual feast, and though he fell to vigor- 
ously his appetite was always seconded by his digestion. 
There are men who take up the contents of books as a 
sponge takes up the contents of a basin, and give them out 
again in like manner, perhaps a little soiled by contact with 
the orifices of their minds. There are others who read 
mainly for the sake of saying that they have read, and a 
long catalogue of authors' names is about all that stays by 
them. Mr. Staples, it is needless to say, belonged to nei- 
ther of these classes. His reading was a perpetual search 
for truth and beauty ; a continual comparison of the results 
of other thinkers with his own. He took books into his 
mind as a healthy man takes food into his stomach, to 
assimilate all that was worth assimilating and to throw the 
rest away. He had little patience with men whose opin- 
ions were always those of the last book they had read. He 
w r as singularly independent in his judgments of authors, 
new and old; no vassal of great names; making original 
approaches and first hand acquaintances at all times. Dur- 
ing his Brooklyn ministry his favorite philosophers were 
Fichte and Herbert Spencer, a fact conclusive in itself of 
his intellectual catholicity. 



BROOKLYN. 73 

Another opportunity that the new life offered him was 
the opportunity to hear fine music. He made the most of 
it, and every little while his journal blossoms into admira- 
tion and gratitude. But to this world he was no stranger ; 
not so with the world of art, and great was his delight at 
being ushered into it, though at first he was a little dazzled, 
and occasionally mistook tinsel for silver and brass for gold. 
But here also he soon found his feet and kept them firmly ; 
rapidly acquiring, as in every thing else, strong individual 
tastes, and daring to express his thought whether it went 
against or with the fashion. 

FROM HIS JOURNAL. 

"November ijth. — Preached from the text, 6 The wisdom 
which cometh from above is first pure, then peaceable.' I 
made strong allusions to slavery, which gave offense to some. 
It is hard to see this same effect still produced whenever the 
subject of slavery is mentioned in the pulpit. Alienation and 
difference and discord are the immediate results. And yet it 
can not be that God would have us purchase peace by paying 
the price of silence upon such a sin as slavery." 

" November 2JI/1. — I am satisfied that I am finding out the 
great power of love in preaching and writing over merely cold 
criticism or argument. It wins where the other repels." 

" November 29th. — Christened a baby for Mr. Robert Froth- 
ingham. It was a beautiful occasion. The grandmother and 
grandfather were present, and a very large number of aunts and 
uncles and cousins to the little one. There was music and 
dancing and plenty of flowers, and the sweet, wonderful smile 
of the babe looking out on the new world. Oh ! the wonder of 
childhood ! The miracle of birth !" 

"December 2d. — I have all my life long been hinting at great 
truths along the course of my sermons. But usually the hints 
were far-fetched, and the connection with the main subject so 



74 N. A. STAPLES. 

casual as to lose their force. Now these things seem to coinc 
to me in their proper order. I am very anxious now to be true 
to myself in all that I write. I have over-valued the thought 
cf others long enough. Now I am chiefly anxious to express 
my own." 

''December Jth. — It seems to me that I have touched a 
sweeter and better chord in the human heart than ever before. 
I am trying to persuade men to repent, not trying to compel 
them to, as formerly. It is charming to see the gush of grate- 
ful sympathy that rushes out to embrace me. God keep me 
from all bitterness ; let me never drive people away from the 
truth. There was great wisdom in Christ's calling people to 
hint) thus turning their love to him as a person to the benefit 
of the truth which he represented, and which in loving him 
they loved. So may I win others to me for the sake of the 
truth which I would give them." 

" December Sth. — X. has so thoroughly imbued his mind with 
ancient symbols and modes of expression that his religious 
feelings naturally clothe themselves in mediaeval words ; 
whereas, my thoughts and feelings mock at these expressions 
and crave fresh utterance in few simple words. On Sunday 
morning I find it difficult to find words in the Bible simple 
enough to express my feelings of reverence and love." 

" Dece?nber nth. — My course seems more plain to me than 
ever before. / must sttidy to lielp out my own thought. I am 
full of it, and it is good enough to utter ; at least, it is all God 
made me to utter, and therefore best for me to utter." 

FROM LETTERS TO COLLYER. 

" I have witnessed the annual assembling of the Fathers in 
Israel. It has been a sad and disheartening experience. Had 
it been a meeting of undertakers for the purpose of seeing 
Unitarianism decently interred, they could not have been more 
perfectly in character. They are droning over the same points 
which they were talking about five years ago, when I left here 



BROOKLYN. 75 

and vowed that I would never return. Now it is my renewed 
resolution to keep out of these Association meetings." 

But he did not keep his resolution ; two years later found 
him again present, and making what a good judge spoke of 
as " the best speech that ever was made." 

"Brooklyn, November Jth. — It seems wondrous strange to 
me to be here ; to see so many things which I have always 
wanted to see, and to meet so many persons in a matter-of- 
course way whom I would have gone a journey to see. The 
first Sunday I spent here I was a listener in my own church. 
In the evening I went to hear Beecher. House full ; singing 
wonderful ; audience at first noisy and unworshipful, but tho- 
roughly slibdued at last by the prophet's power, and were dis- 
missed after an hour and a half of calm emotion. Beecher de- 
lighted me. His sermon was very tame. There was none of 
his peculiar power in it. He looked weary and evidently felt 
so. What pleased me was to see how well he managed him- 
self. There were three thousand people who had come to hear 
Beech erisms. Not one did they get. He tried two or three 
times to soar, but his wings were too weary, and he fell back 
into the arms of the Spirit and seemed to say in his heart, ' O 
Lord ! I am faint and weary; use me to feed these hungry souls 
as thou wilt.' It was so sweet and child-like and commonplace 
from that great man whose brow was all aglow with power, that 
I became entirely fascinated by what he did not say, and I 
think you can understand me. The subject of his discourse 
was, ' I will have mercy and not sacrifice.' It is more divine 
to cure sin than to punish it, was the burden of his thought. I 
have no doubt that hundreds went away disappointed, but I 
went away filled, and dreamed about it all night." 

li Ao7/em&er 25///. — Yesterday I preached a sermon on 
' Life \' not a life, not immortal life, not any given quality of 
life, but Life. I was amazed at the expressions of thankfulness 
it called forth. I came home, went into my chamber, and wept 



J 6 N. A. STAPLES. 

for gratitude to the Holy Spirit. I can not understand it. It 
makes me — all this love — as humble, meek, and tearful as a 
child. My constant prayer is, Dear Father, hold me close to 
thyself. Let me not stir a hair's breadth from the truth and 
right. Take away my pride, my folly, my ambition, and use 
me as thy child ! I am not elated, dear Collyer, in the least. 
I am only happy and surprised. I have let my pen run on 
foolishly and rapidly as it would, but will not apologize to you 
because I want our letters to be mile-stones to date our pro- 
gress from. If, hereafter, I have to sing a different tune, it 
will be interesting to remember this beginning." 

Of the sermon here spoken of* Mr. Staples says in his 
journal: 

" I have for many years thought of this subject, but have 
never before been able to do justice to my thought upon it. I 
have now done the best I can do." 

But he soon returns to it again, first in a written sermon 
on the text, " In him was life, and the life was the light of 
men," then in a speech made at Boston, then in an extem- 
pore discourse, and finally in the sermon printed in this 
volume on the text, " Your life is hid with Christ in God." 

" January 27th, 1862. — In all your letters there was nothing 
so sweet to me as what you say of Emerson, and his remark 
about me. I tell you, Collyer, in this hot shower of praise 
which is always raining on us, a few drops of cool, sweet spring- 
water of criticism are like ice on the tongue of a fevered woman. 
I feel more and more dissatisfied with praise. My standing is 
so well fixed, now, among those whom I love that I can afford 
(and you as well) to grab at every bit of just criticism as a per- 
fect God-send. And if we don't get it, we shall cease to grow. 
I understand perfectly well what Emerson meant. I had just 
returned from the army, and for some time felt uneasy in city 
society, and was so ashamed of it that I forced myself into an 



BROOKLYN. 77 

unnatural indifference toward it. But my swift instinct felt it 
long ago and recoiled from it. Yet how acute in him to ob- 
serve it. I like him the better for not liking what I hated in 
myself. I am glad you told him of our Washington life ; it 
will correspond with so much that he has written and said 
about friendship. I was most pleased with your last letter be- 
cause you sat down quietly to write it. I wonder if the letters 
I write in a hurry don't impress you just as your hurried ones 
do me ? I can tell in reading the first sentence how it is with 
you, and suppose it must be the same with mine to you. I 
don't like a letter written out of your study half so well as one 
written in it." 

"That Albano ! my boy, [In Jean Paul Richter's Titan^\ 
I was like him once ! Now don't laugh ; but it is true on a 
small scale. I had all his guilelessness, all his purity, and all 
his hunger and thirst, and infinite longing for a friend, and all 
his love of nature. Oh ! how I have cried for some one to love 
me as a friend ! It seems to me now if I had found him earlier 
it would have saved a great many spring-flowers of my spirit 
which got crushed out before he came. But I am so glad he 
came at all that I will not complain." 

" Brooklyn, January z%th. — About books. It is of no use to 
bruise our minds over them. The time may come when we 
shall find ourselves directly in their range. I have overtaken 
and conquered many books for which I once had no relish. 
They are most useful when they help us unearth gold which 
we have caught glimpses of. It is hardly worth while to dig 
for the book's sake. A live man passes through such a variety 
of mental changes that he will, some time or other, need the 
book." 

" May %th, 1862. — I am so glad you are coming ; one wants 
to look into the eyes of his friends now if ever. The terrible 
new: from the army of the Potomac is just being cried through 
the streets, and it strikes my ears like a death-knell. Yet right 
here on the spot I do resolve not to die every day afresh as I 
have done. We must in some way keep our souls above it. I 



78 N. A. STAPLES. 

feel that there is a calm, a sure retreat for souls like mine, to 
which I must flee in self-defense. Now is the time for us to 
draw our friendships close to our hearts, to find all the joy and 
help we can in simple, homely blessings, to meet our poor peo- 
ple with calm, upward look, and do all we can for our country 
just where we stand ; but die for her, even though she is 
stretched on the bloody field in this awful storm, we must not, 
can not. I could die over this news ; my heart would break if 
I would let it, but it must beat on for others. Still I want to 
see you awfully ; it will do me good to feel the good cheer and 
radiant hopefulness of your far-seeing nature." 

" I have just finished the January number of the Westmin- 
ster. It is a great institution. What would we give for such a 
work in this country ? It is a perfect monitor — firing wrought- 
iron shot and dreading no danger. That article on the Religion 
of the Working Classes was admirable. Do you know the 
author ? I am fully alongside of those ideas, and have been 
for some time ; and I can see plainly enough that the people 
who arrived there stark naked, losing their clothes in the strug- 
gle, are now clothing themselves in all that is beautiful and be- 
coming ; and the faith which grows upon such views will be 
firm as the hills, and the piety which springs from it free and 
pure as mountain air. Let us not, dear Collyer, fear to speak 
our deepest convictions. In the long run nothing else lives 
and pays." 

"May I4t/i, 1861. — What you say of the thought, or absence 
of thought, which you feel in such an experience as the death 

of Mrs. R , is but an expression of my own feeling. I 

should like to haul the matter over with you. I am satisfied 
that there is an iron frame of fate about this world, against 
which savage, Greek and Christian alike bruise themselves. 
It creates endurance in the savage, submission and fortitude in 
the Greek, and should produce all these mingled into faith in 
the Christian. We are apt to leave an element of endurance 
out of our system, which nevertheless is quite essential to cha- 
racter. The materials of creation seem almost to limit God. 



BROOKLYN. 7 

The stuff seems to say, if you have one good result, then bad 
ones must go along with it. If teeth are to be set firm in gums, 
then they must cut hard ; if they set firm in the jaw, they must 
pull hard. If you have symmetry in woman, she must have 
pain in child-birth. If you have nerves to protect man from the 
elements, then they must make him suffer. If free will, then 
sin ; if growth in knowledge, then suffering from ignorance, 
etc., etc." 

"June lOt/i, 1862. — What you said of my Easter sermon 
pleased me more than all the other good things that others 
have said of it. Yet I am satisfied that I have a deeper and 
clearer vein, which was not opened in that discourse. It was 
mostly local in its interests and application. You would be* 
surprised to see a note which I received from Dr. Hill [then 
President of Antioch] on the subject. He said, ' The resurrec- 
tion of Jesus is a "questioned event" only as the life of Napo- 
leon Bonaparte or the battle of Bunker Hill.' I replied, 'That 
assertion is absurd on the face of it, for this reason if for no 
other, that no man was ever known to question or doubt those 
two historical facts, while some of the world's best minds and 
hearts have always doubted the physical resurrection of Jesus ; 
and while there is no increase of the former doubt, there is a 
rapid increase of the latter. If there is no difference in the 
historic certainty of the events, why is there this grozvmg differ- 
ence in the attitude of critics and historians toward them. ?' " 

" Staten Island, Sept. 2d, 1862. — It is strange I have not 
written you long ere this. I don't know why I have not, but 
think it was because I felt a lingering assurance that you would 
come back to me again. It seems impossible that you have 
come and gone again. 

" ' You may break, you may ruin the vase if you will, 
But the scent of the roses will hang round it still.' 

" I roam about here where we were together and think of 
you. That Huntingdon j;ime is sweet to remember. I saw you 
enough to love you more and to esteem you more highly. It 



8o N. A. STAPLES. 

seems strange when I read what you say of me. Were it not 
from you, I should throw it aside ; coming from you, I take it 
to heart and feel humble as a child. If it is true that very 
special power has been given me, there is small chance that it 
will ever come to much compared with the fruition of your rare 
gifts ; but such as I have, God give me a chance to use. I do 
feel more certain than I used to, and have seen my way more 
clearly ever since we were together at Washington. You 
helped me to it, and there is small danger of my believing my- 
self in advance of you ; but you must think just as well of me 
as you can ; it does me good." 

" Staten Island, Sept. i6th. — I believe old Tauler was right 
when he said, ' The aspiration and sighing of the soul is ever 
for repose.' And that repose comes to us just as we feel the 
necessity of our peculiarity ; that wherein we differ from all 
other things and forces in the universe, in that is our being a 
necessity with God, something without which he would be un- 
revealed. When one feels that to the centre of his being, he 
is happy, strong, self-poised, and as successful as gravitation. 
Now, my peculiarity is not the successful one with man ; but 
if I am exactly true to it, it will be successful with God. In 
times like these one must find some such rock to rest on in the 
general loosening of the old social safeguards. Every thing 
seems threatened with failure, and my best prayers and hopes 
among the rest ; yet nothing ever fails but — no, nothing fails, 
not even evil and wrong. I love to get back to the original 
elements and feel that the general thaw and dissolution will not 
carry these away. I love to look up to heaven these delicious 
Staten Island evenings, and dream of the everlasting spaces, 
and feel the old tranquillity of the universe flowing through me 
in spirit rivers. For man fails, and I love to feel that ' God's 
in his heaven ; All's right with the world.' " 

FROM THE JOURNAL. 

" Jan. ist, 1862. — So another year is begun. I want to 
adopt Faith, Hope, Love, Industry, and Sincerity as my watch- 



BROOKLYN. 8 1 

words for this new year. I would pray for them each day, and 
live by them. God help me ! Give me more faith in thee and 
in thy truth. Give me hope to see the brightest and best side 
of life and every thing ; love to every body, a love which shall 
take away all bitterness toward others, which shall reveal some- 
thing lovable in all human creatures ; and sincerity, that I may 
walk uprightly and look at the world from the centre of my own 
life — that life which God gave me alone, that life in and through 
which comes all my strength." 

" Jan. 6th. — This evening went with Mr. and Mrs. Mills to 
an artist's reception in New- York. It was a pleasant occasion, 
but no time for seeing pictures. Met several of the artists. 
Saw also Prof. Morse. I asked him if the wonder of his own 
miracle had entirely worn off. He said, No, that he often went 
into the operator's room and sat down and wondered, as if it 
had no connection with himself." 

"Jan. igth. — The old sermon went dangerously well, thanks 
in part to my improved delivery. Have heard many cordial 
approvals of it. But may I not be too ready to resort to such 
helps. May I labor and dig faithfully to coin thought from my 
freshest present life." 

A man can sometimes answer his own prayers, and Mr. 
Staples answered this one to perfection. His Milwaukee 
sermons were seldom drawn upon, save now and then for 
the main thought, which was developed in an entirely dif- 
ferent fashion. For the most part, his difficulty was not in 
finding subjects, but in choosing between the many that 
crowded upon him ; at one time, according to the journal, 
fifteen being dotted down and clamorous for immediate 
treatment. 

"Feb. \\th. — I feel that the psychologist and the philosopher 
are about to meet and join forces." 

"Feb. 23d. — I have received so many testimonials of love 
6 



82 N. A. STAPLES. 

and gratitude for my services that I feel satisfied. I have not 
another wish or want. I am rich beyond the wealth of kings 
in this heavenly love. I can only lie still and breathe out a 
speechless prayer that it may be ever thus." 

" Mendoii, March 12th. — Went to a surprise party at Perry's. 
It did seem strange to meet my old life of twelve years ago face 
to face. There was the same fiddler fiddling the same tunes." 

This visit to his father's house, which lasted a fortnight, 
was doubly necessary ; for his wife and Fred w r ere there — 
had been all w T inter — and his long separation from them 
had made him anxious and unhappy ; but besides this rea- 
son, for the second time since his settlement in November, 
his throat was in a state that made preaching quite im- 
possible. 

" March 161/1. — What a joy it is to be loved by so many good 
people ! It sweetens many a sad hour, and inspires many a 
pleasing hope. There seemed to be a universal joy at my 
return." 

"March 23d. — It is wonderful how elastic my people are to 
the touch of spiritual impressions. It is because they have 
never been fooled with. Their feelings have never been played 
with for special effects, and whenever they are appealed to they 
respond freely, by a surprising sympathy." 

" Mendon, April Jth. — Came back from preaching in Boston 
this evening, and found a fine little daughter and a happy wife 
awaiting me. O joy ! that we are permitted to have another 
little girl. It is pathetic to see the joy of our dear Fred. He 
said once, ' Mamma, I'm glad we have this baby, even if it 
don't live.' A beautiful rebuke of our lurking fears." 

TO COLLYER. 

" Mc?ido7i, April 2d, — Here I am again, amid the scenes of 
my childhood. I still hope that I shall some time be here with 
you. Every rock, and tree, and brook has its history, which I 



BROOKLYN. £3 

should like to tell you, but which is too sacred for other ears. 
And then I have a fond hope, a very fond hope, that I may 
some time visit the scenes of your childhood with you. Oh ! 
think what a joy it would be ! I tell you, brother, such expe- 
riences would distill a great deal of heavenly honey from our 
natures. It is a sweet spring morning, and nature looks bright 
as a newly-shriven nun. Every thing revels in sunlight. Flies 
on my window are intoxicated with the golden champagne ; 
wrens, robins, blue-birds, and blue-jays are very musical with 
the affairs of love, I can hear the same brook sing which sang 
to me when a little boy, and filled me with wonder and pleasure. 
I often played in it until mother would say, ' Come, Gus, we 
are all going to bed ; will you play in that water all night ?' 
My better brother was all the time busy with his book in the 
corner. I had the brook full of water-wheels, and many was 
the scolding I got for worshiping there by moonlight, but it 
was a beautiful idolatry. It is a dear, dear morning. It does 
not make me prayerful as the orthodox call it and understand 
it, but it makes me feel like a spirit, harmonious and happy as 
the creation about me. I feel God all around me in this rare 
sunshine, and yet the thought ' Thou knowest that I love thee' 
stops all utterance. Indeed, I should feel out of all patience 
with anybody's prayer just now. My boy is brimful of joy, and 
runs from one thing to another with a merry way as if we were 
only a higher product of the same sunshine. There is a pre- 
cious prayerfulness about his happiness which I can't help 
feeling must please God, O Lord ! how wonderful are thy 
works ; in wisdom and love hast thou made them all ! Is 
there really any war in this world on this bright morning ? ' An 
enemy hath sown tares.' What a cheap and weak yet natural 
account that is of life's contrasts. It takes the perspective of 
the biggest development to throw these lights and shadows into 
the harmony of One mind, just as the two rails of a railroad 
track come together when you can see far enough. 

" Collyer, there is a greatf work for some one to do for our de- 



84 N. A. STAPLES. 

nomination. We need an entirely new cnltus. All our traps 
of Sunday-school books, hymn-books, liturgies, and the like 
must be changed some time. I wish we had a set of Sunday- 
school books which would ask and answer, not Scripture 
questions necessarily, but the real questions of the spirit as 
asked and answered by the best minds of the world, in the 
Bible and out of it. 

" By the by, what do you call yourself? What should the 
new uprising of the soul among us and in Europe be called ? 
We are properly spiritualists, but that name has been de- 
flowered." 

" Mendon, April nth. — I have a little daughter, and her 
name is Cora Collyer Staples ! [Collyer had named a boy for 
Staples, four months earlier, R. S. C, which, being interpreted, 
Staples said meant 'Right Shall Conquer.'] Thank God, this 
agony of expectancy is over. She was born on Sunday last, 
just as our poor boys, under Grant, were withstanding the 
shock of sixty thousand of the flowers of chivalry, officered by 
four of the best generals in their army. Oh ! memorable day 
of joy and woe ! Collyer, what will the orthodox say about the 
souls of those rough, profane, vulgar, wicked men who have 
baptized the name and cause of liberty in their best blood ? 
They ought to damn them, but they dare not do it ; every in- 
stinct of nature cries out for mercy for them, and God is better 
than good men. It is a splendid problem for them to chew 
over. It is clear enough to us. Every man takes just what he 
can hold. If a pint, it is filled ; if a hogshead, it is filled ; if 
the ocean, the supply is proportioned to the demand. Men 
who hold a pint are expanded by this last great consecration to 
hold a great sum of blessedness, and they will receive every 
man his penny." 

FROM THE JOURNAL. 

" Heard Mr. preach upon what Christianity has done 

for the world. He cited the worst parts of heathen civilization, 
and compared them with the best parts of the Christian, and 



BROOKLYN. 85 

naturally made out a case. But he could have turned round and 
made just as good a case the other way. The difference be- 
tween the world now and before Christianity is partly owing to 
the difference between its youth and age." 

" May 2d.— Began a sermon from the text, ' Perfect love cast- 
eth out fear.' " 

" May 3d. — Finished sermon. It has been a pleasure to 
write it. It was suggested by a remark of Fanny Hillard\s, ' I 
trust in God's love.' It flashed upon me at once how central 
it was, and gave me great light." 

" May 7th. — Had a delightful drive over Staten Island. I 
had no conception of its beauty before. Came home at twelve 
a happier and a holier man." 

The upshot of this excursion, was that Mr. Staples w^ent 
to Staten Island, to pass the summer w r ith an ever-faithful 
friend. There in due time he carried Mrs. Staples, Fred 
and Cora Collyer; there, anon, came Collyer himself, and 
also Conway, to spend a few days. Those were days, every 
one of them, to mark with a wdiite stone. Then, so Collyer 
tells me, Staples would talk for hours on immortality, in no 
spirit of curiosity, but with deep central earnestness. Had 
he already smelled the beds of asphodel ? Were these long 
talks intended to prepare his friend for a " divine event," of 
which he had received prophetic intimations ? " Spent all 
the time in precious talk," the journal says of these delight- 
ful days. 

" Heard one of our Unitarian ministers preach. It was a tough 
sermon. In the midst of it, a matronly old hen began cackling 
from the fullness of her heart, and seemed the only inspired one 
> at church or around it." 

" Septe7nber 6th. — Am so sick of thinking of our country's af- 
fairs, that I have made up my mind to turn to my own work, do 
the nearest duty most earnestly, and leave the rest to God. It 



86 N. A. STAPLES. 

seems to me that if he were to hold up a table of stone, on 
which was written, ' Liberate your bondmen or you shail not 
succeed in battle,' it could not be more plainly manifest to us, 
than it now is." 

On Sunday, September 14th, Mr. Staples's vacation ended, 
and the church was reopened. The week previous had 
been one of the darkest of the war, and from out its daik- 
ness Mr. Staples wrote his first sermon, on the text, " Why 
art thou cast down, O my soul? Hope thou in God!'' 
The first half of the sermon enumerates with startling force 
the reasons for depression, reasons which were emphasized 
by the presence of a rebel army in Maryland, with which, 
even while Mr. Staples spoke, McClellan was struggling 
doubtfully at South Mountain. The last half of the sermon 
takes up the last part of the text, " Hope thou in God." 
But it was not in "the name of the Lord," that Mr. Staples 
bade his people hope. It was in God as justice ; in God as 
the life of the American people; in God as presented to 
them in the stern necessities of the hour. During the war 
I heard many sermons about it, some of them wonderfully 
strong. But I do not remember to have heard any which 
made my pulses leap, as I am certain this would have made 
them at the time, as it does even now, when the weary hand 
that wrote it has been resting for almost six years, under the 
sunny slope that he selected for his resting place. I can not 
report it. I can not make extracts from it, for it is a unit. 
I would print it all, but that the occasion which demanded 
it, is so remote from the activities and feelings of the present 
time. 

But this sermon w r as only one of the many "war ser- 
mons " that Mr. Staples preached in Brooklyn, though he 
was never one of those who preached about the war because 



BROOKLYN. 87 

such preaching was the easiest. Criticism of battles and 
campaigns, so common at that time in the pulpit, he left 
for those who knew much more about these things than 
he. His concern was with the great principles underlying 
the contest, with the humanities that on the one hand it en- 
dangered, and on the other summoned to its aid. The force 
in him, that in more peaceful times would have sought other 
channels of expression, rushed into this and filled it to the 
brim. His sermons on the war and its accompanying prob- 
lems, were among the best he ever preached. It was un- 
avoidable that such sermons should suffer by the lapse of 
time. If they could have been printed immediately after 
his death, while the war was still raging, they would have 
awakened a deeper response than any others. That they 
would not now, is neither their fault nor his. After the 
work which is at once universal and special, that is the best 
which most effectually serves the hour, though it should im- 
mediately after fail of honor and significance. And so it 
happens that the best work is not always best remembered. 
An inverse ratio oftentimes exists between a man's present 
usefulness and his future reputation. Mr. Staples knew this 
as well as any body, but present usefulness, not future reputa- 
tion, was what he wanted to attain. He little thought that 
any of his sermons would be printed after his death. He 
did not feel that any of them were adequate expressions of 
his thought. That he had grown much, only assured him 
that he should grow much more in time to come. Why 
then are any printed ? Because they are the best he did do, 
if not the best he could have done, had he lived longer. 
Because the people who knew how he loved them, and gave 
himself for them, know that he was anxious to express his 
deepest thought, only that he might strengthen and beautify 



88 N. A. STAPLES. 

their lives; because his sermons did this when they were 
written, and they are certain they will do so now, and there- 
fore certain that they have his full consent to bring a few of 
them together and share them with their friends. 

But besides the fact that many of Mr. Staples's best ser- 
mons dealt with the war and consequently are now out of date, 
in estimating him from those contained in this volume, it 
ought also to be remembered, that since his death there has 
been a most remarkable change in men's theological ideas, 
a change like one of those great movements of the ancient 
earth, which lifted whole continents at once to a higher 
level. We are none of us now on the same level that we oc- 
cupied six or seven years ago. In the Unitarian denomina- 
tion this movement has been specially apparent. To a su- 
perficial observer it may seem that we have gone back, and 
so, ill certain outward things, we have. But it was only be- 
cause the tide was rising so fast, that Mrs. Partington became 
so excited and handled her broom so nervously, and it is 
only because the tide of religious freedom and radicalism 
has been rising so fast, that the ecclesiastical Mrs. Parting- 
tons have brought out their creeds and shibboleths to sweep 
it back. During his Brooklyn ministry Mr. Staples was cer- 
tainly one of the advanced guard of the denomination, as 
would more certainly appear, should more of his sermons of 
theology be printed. No man's thought was fresher; no 
man's ecclesiastical ideas more unconventional. In this re- 
spect the most of us are still far behind the place which he 
then occupied, while in the matter of pure thought, his quali- 
ties and tendencies were such, that could he have been spared 
to us, the radical wing of the denomination would proba- 
bly have found in him one of its swiftest heralds. 

But while radicalism is good, religion is better, and it 



BROOKLYN. 89 

was as a teacher and inspirer of religion, that Mr. Staples 
did his grandest work, and will be longest and most lovingly 
remembered. That is not something which changes its re- 
lations to the human soul, in five years, or five hundred. It 
is the same yesterday, to-day and for ever. Theological and 
critical conceptions may vary, but the sense of infinite pro- 
tection, the hope of immortality, the entrancing beauty of 
the ideal, these things are perennial and eternal. But new 
paths may be opened to the old fountains, new approaches 
made to the holy of holies in man's heart. To give the old- 
est truths a new inflection is the preacher's highest task ; to 
so present them to his hearers, that they shall be won by 
them into the sacred precincts of a higher life, this is his 
joy and crown. To do this was Mr. Staples's constant strug- 
• gle and his supreme success. 

In order to give the reader some idea of tue scope of Mr. 
Staples's work, as well as in deference to his feelings of its 
inadequacy and unfitness for publication, portions of a num- 
ber of his sermons are given with the few that are printed 
entire. But it ought in justice to him to be asserted, that 
he is one of the last persons to make extracts from. Sen- 
tences here and there are crammed with meaning. " Jewels 
five words long," are met with constantly. But every para- 
graph of any length in his sermons is so bound up with 
every other, that to detach one without injury is impossible. 
His sermons are very uniform in their structure. The ma. 
jority of them begin with the elucidation of his text and 
context. He was very fond of reading into the Bible as well 
as out of it. In this respect he makes me think, and has 
made others think, of Robertson. He is certainly as ration- 
alistic, in the technical sense of making that seem reason- 
able in the Bible which is not so on its face. But in Robert- 



90 N. A. STAPLES. 

son's case, this was justified by his idea that the Bible 
as the word of God must harmonize with reason; in Mr. 
Staples's case, by his idea that the men who wrote the Bible 
were simple, child-like, earnest men, and so most likely to be 
fundamentally in the right in their ideas of God and man 
and their relations, whatever surface blunders they might 
commit. This thought runs through the whole texture of 
his biblical criticism. Perhaps careless persons were some- 
times misled, by his appeals to Bible witnesses, into thinking 
that he regarded them as supernatural authorities. Nothing 
could be further from the truth ; it is never, in the last years 
of his ministry, the super naturalness of the Bible that he 
argues from, but its intense naturalness. At one time he 
says expressly, that it is only because the Bible is more fa- 
miliar to us than other sacred writings, that it serves us bet- 
ter in the way of argument and illustration. 

The poetry of his nature comes out in the expository in- 
troductions to his sermons ; the strength of it in that which 
immediately follows — the development of his thought. This 
was the part he wrestled over and rejoiced in most of all." 
He was not content to impinge here and there upon great 
principles. He desired to know their sweep ; to trace their 
curves till they returned again; to see them come full 
circle. His faith was of the firmest that " the world was 
made at one cast." He looked everywhere for unity. 
Given a principle, he felt that it must operate on every 
plane, in every sphere of life. His sermons ended almost 
invariably with a variety of illustrations ; applications of his 
principles to the practical affairs of life. In almost every 
one of them " Extemporize " is written more than once, and 
the passages which he extemporized were those which told 
most on his audience. 



BROOKLYN. 91 

Such being the structure of his sermons, it will at once 
appear, that they too were made at one cast and can not 
easily be shown in pieces. The illustrations need the de- 
velopment; the development, the illustrations. The only 
part that is not really essential is the exegetical beginning, 
though by itself this part was always full of suggestions and 
surprises. 

But even if the reader could be put in possession of all 
the sermons that Mr. Staples ever wrote in their entirety, if 
he had never heard him, he woujd still be unable to appre- 
ciate his influence as a preacher. There was something 
about him which can not be reported. If I had known him 
ever so well I might have felt its magic spell and so have 
had a richer experience of my own, so have realized the 
power and wonder of the man as now I never can, but I 
could not have reported it any more than I can now. It 
was that mysterious something which we call presence. 
Nothing is so intangible, but nothing is more real. It is 
not here or there but it is everywhere. And Mr. Staples 
was thus gifted in a wonderful degree. Not always equally ; 
far less so in the general intercourse of society than in the 
pulpit. That was his tripod, and when he mounted it the 
Spirit came and filled him with its power. It was a wonder 
to himself. Sermons that he had written with difficulty and 
pain, that had come to him without any gush or joyfulness, 
would sometimes, when he stood before his people, suddenly 
dilate, and grow with an afflatus that hardly seemed his 
own. Sometimes it would inform the words that he had 
written with new meaning, sometimes it would cast them 
scornfully aside, and substitute for them others more worthy 
of the inspiration of the hour. 

For the very reason tnat Mr. Staples was thus gifted, his 



92 N. A. STAPLES. 

printed sermons can not seem to others as they seemed to 
those who heard them in his living voice ; saw them flash 
from his eye, quiver upon his lips, and exhale from every 
attitude and motion of his frame. It is not that the ser- 
mons are less, it is that the man was more. I can only 
hope that as those who knew him read the few I have 
selected, he will once more seem to stand bodily before 
them, and it will be less as if they read them than as if he 
preached them in the old strong, sweet tones, electrifying, 
sympathetic, that used to c^arry them away as with a flood. 
The real sermon is not a mere manuscript ; but the manu- 
script is all that can be printed. That itself seems to me in 
our friend's case always noble, earnest ; often great. But it 
is by no means a fair exponent of the effect which he pro- 
duced upon his congregation. The kingdom of heaven as 
it voiced itself through him from week to week, was not in 
word but in power. 

If these remarks on Mr. Staples's preaching, and introduc- 
tory to the few sermons and fragments I have brought 
together are appropriate anywhere, is it not just here where 
he was in the full tide of his Brooklyn ministry ? But to 
return to his sermon of September 14th, which was the 
occasion of my digression, we find that it was too flat-footed 
for some of his people. Of course the adverse criticism 
found him out; whereupon for September 28th he wrote a 
sermon on " The sphere of the pulpit." The early part of 
the sermon which was on the text " It is not lawful for thee 
to have her," was spent in showing that there is nothing 
that man can do or think, however remote in its inception 
from the ordinary teaching of the pulpit, which may not 
suddenly turn up a moral side, and come within its imme- 
diate reach. The conclusion shows to what extent he had 



BROOKLYN. 93 

overcome the hesitation that he felt in Lexington about 
delivering his soul. 

" There is no pulpit in our denomination which has so hand- 
some a reputation for freedom as this has. It is generally 
known and admitted that any man who has a truth to speak 
in love, can speak it here ; that the members of this society 
do not hold their opinions by so feeble a tenure that they are 
afraid to hear any other opinions expressed. And there is no 
prouder reputation to be won or lost. Numbers, wealth, influ- 
ence, are only mockeries of a church, without a perfectly free 
pulpit. For this blessing we are indebted partly to your own 
good sense, and partly to the true and loving heroism of your 
former pastor. And while the pulpit is mine I do not intend it 
shall lose a prize so nobly won. 

" No man but a minister can tell what an exceeding great joy 
it is, when in the simple pursuit of his duty he preaches words 
which all are glad to hear, and which draw forth increased 
expressions of love and approbation from his people. And as 
sweet as that is, so bitter is it, when in the same pursuit of his 
duty, he speaks a truth which men will not hear gladly, but 
which they mock at and turn away from. It seems as if he 
could not nerve himself again to prophesy other than words of 
peace. Yet I imagine a deeper hell, a hotter torture than 
this to seize upon one who for the love of ease, and for the 
sake of peace and the fear of displeasure, has sold his manhood 
with his liberty and refused to declare the whole counsel of 
God. From such a torment, O Lord, deliver me ! and may our 
relation of pastor and people ever remain what it has always 
been, a union of love in speaking and hearing the truth, and 
seeking and doing the right, in knowing and living the good 
and pure and holy." 

" October yrd. — Am writing another sermon on i Life.' " 

" October loth. — Have written hardly on ' As a man thinketh 
in his heart, so is he.' " 

" October l^th. — The Autumnal Convention met here to-day. 



94 N. A. STAPLES. 

Convention sermon by C. C. Everett of Bangor. It was quiet, 
cool and pure as a mountain brook. " 

" October 16th. — Third day of convention. A few of us young 
men held a meeting at Mr. Mills's house after the morning ses- 
sion, to see if we could not effect some organization among our- 
selves of the radical wing of the denomination. 

" October ijth, Philadelphia. — Stayed all night with Dr. Fur- 
ness. Was thoroughly exhausted from excitement and want of 
sleep. There was a bright fire on the hearth, a soft pillow on 
the lounge, and no one in the room but the doctor and myself. 
He brought out the manuscripts of a new book which he is about 
to publish, and began to read in a soft, soothing tone about the 
Man of Nazareth. I listened until the music wrought its charm 
on my weary nerves, and I fell asleep. I slept, Oh how sweetly, 
breathing great draughts of repose, until the charm was broken, 
and I awoke to find the reading ceased and the book laid away. 
We had much laughter over the affair. The doctor said, ' Now, 
sleep is in the course of nature. My theory must be the natu- 
ral one since it chimes in so easily with sleep.' Then we sat up 
till two in the morning." 

Mr. Staples's reverence for, and love of Dr. Furness began 
when he was at Meadville, and increased until his death. 
In his letters and journals many of their interviews are re- 
corded, and always with a deep and tender joy and thank- 
fulness. The last entry in the journal is that of October 
28th: 

" A bright, charming day. . Came back to Staten Island. It 
was too charming to be resisted.'' 

So ended the first year of his Brooklyn ministry. Its 
outward success had been great; but its inward success, 
both for himself and for his people, had been greater. 
Coming up from Staten Island with his family, they went 
to house-keeping on Brooklyn Heights, where he could over- 



BROOKLYN. 95 

look the bay and the island, and live over again in recol- 
lection the bright summer days, the lovely rambles, and the 
delicious talks he had there enjoyed. 

TO COLLYER. 

" Xove?nber 6//1, 1862. — I waited very impatiently to hear that 
you were once more in the old study-chair, and grinding in the 
old mill of duty. Your letter was very grateful to me, because I 
could not help feeling that with all the excitements of new 
friendships which you had just experienced, your interest in me 
must be decreased. And I stood gazing up into heaven whither 
I had seen you carried by the love and approbation of the 
wisest and the best, half believing that you would never come 
thence to me in the old way again. I was willing to stand aside 
and see you outstrip us all in your success, but with a half dis- 
trusting faith that you might love me a little better than you 
did any one else. Your letter came with the old, cool sweet- 
ness, which gives me entire satisfaction." 

" December 3d. — I write while waiting in a carpet store for a 
few minutes. Have not got settled yet, but hope to this week. 
Never was a letter more grateful to me than your last, so gene- 
rous and manly. I trembled a little at your delay. It was 
hard for me to speak so plainly of your good lecture, but I 
should not have been true to myself or you otherwise. God 
bless you ! We shall grow, so long as we have such faithful 
mentors in each other. 

" My wife has been sick unto death almost with diphtheria, 
and with all my other cares it has knocked hard at my nerves, 
but thank heaven we are all well again. I had a singular feel- 
ing of comfort and reliance in destiny during my most anxious 
hours. The fatalists and the spiritualists (not the rappers) are' 
very near each other in that. John Tauler and Herbert 
Spencer begin at opposite sides of the river of life to spring 
their arch of belief; but both meet in the central key-stone of 
faith in an Omnipotence which gives and takes away as he 



96 N. A. STAPLES. 

wills. And both draw the same inference, namely: the duty of 
self-surrender, with this difference, that one says with Marcus 
Aurelius, ' Let the gods give what they will or take what they 
will ;' while the other says/ Blessed be the name of the Lord.' " 

" April gt/i, 1863. — I was reading over the other day the 
long pile of your letters, and it did me a world of good. I 
wondered if we should ever sit down in heaven and look over 
old letters written on the leaves of memory." 

"April 22d. — Are you getting the full enjoyment of these 
sweet days ? They come about our island like the smile of 
God. Never were such tender mercies so welcome. There is 
hope of peace on earth and good-will among men, so long as 
this old miracle of seed-time and harvest is wrought each year 
by the Father's love." 

" October %th. — The last time I saw Bartol, he said to me in 
a touching whisper, ' Brother Staples, if there is one thing for 
which I thank God more than another, it is that I have not met 
with great success as a popular preacher as I once hoped to do. 
I can see that God has been very good to me in that. ' " 

" October St/i. — The subject of optimism cannot well be got 
into a nut-shell, although yours is one of the best I have ever 
met with. It has untold height and depth of mysteries. If 
there is one thing which must be held absolute and unalterable, 
it is the eternal difference between right and wrong. That is 
our only anchoring-place." 

" Nove7nber $tk. — That is a real good point you make about 
women's treatment in the Bible. I tell you it is a shameful 
book in some of its chapters on that subject, and the time will 
come when it will be so regarded." 

" November $th. — That Washington experience was the oc- 
casion of all my new life here. It gave me self-poise and 
repose, without which neither of us can do tolerably well. 
Then come here and let us ' Orient ourselves' again, in a quiet 
thoughtless way." 

The last of these quotations brings us to the end of Mr. 



BROOKLYN. 97 

Staples's second year in Brooklyn. It began in hope, and 
better health than Mr. Staples had enjoyed for some time 
previous. Lincoln's proclamation of September 2 2d, threat- 
ening emancipation in January, " a bomb-shell with a 
three months' fuse," as Mr. Staples calls it in one of his 
letters, took a great weight from his mind and heart ; and 
when the shell exploded on the first of January, he was 
filled with noble joy. His sermons came to him " feeling 
solid," and his wife was now at hand to save him from the 
agony of penning them. The little church began to think 
of raising its roof to admit galleries, and give room to the 
new comers. There was a many-sidedness in Mr. Staples 
that attracted many sorts of people, and so saved the 
society from becoming a mere family party. To the at- 
tractions of his subject-matter and his style, he added that 
presence, before spoken of, and a skill in reading and delivery, 
for the sake of enjoying which some who were not spiritually 
drawn to him managed to endure his politics and his re- 
ligion. He did not regret that he could draw such persons. 
Certain that he never stooped to do so, he rejoiced, and 
fondly trusted that they might yet be inspired by his preach- 
ing, as well as entertained. But though some of his seed 
fell by the wayside, and some of it among thorns, the 
most of it fell into good ground. Especially beautiful w r as 
his influence upon young men. The memory of his 
prayers is even sweeter than the memory of his sermons. 
They exhaled from him as naturally as fragrance from a 
rose ; at such times I have been told " he used to seem 
pure spirit," and " every body had a feeling that he was 
praying for them personally." I have read somewhere of 
a tree in India that grows to a great height, then at its top 
bursts into one resplendent flower, then perishes for ever. 
7 



98 N. A. STAPLES. 

The life of Mr. Staples was like that tree. His Brooklyn 
ministry was like that flower. Its beauty and fragrance 
heralded his death. Just as a long career of usefulness 
seemed opening before him, he was summoned to another 
field of labor. " Other sheep I have which are not of this 
fold," whispered the Spirit, and he went forth to tend them 
on the hills of heaven. 

In February, 1863, he went to Boston for an exchange, 
and while there took a severe cold, from which he never 
recovered. From early in May until he went to Toledo in 
June he was very miserable, though it was during this time 
that he attended the May meetings in Boston, and made 
the deepest impression he ever made upon his fellow-minis- 
ters. His speech was no chance word. Like Sir Joshua 
Reynolds with his picture, he had been making it all his 
life. It was the germ of a new development of his favorite 
thought of " Life," which he had suddenly discovered in 
his mind. By the time he got back to Brooklyn it had 
attained the proportions of an extempore sermon, which he 
preached on Sunday morning. After that it grew into the 
first sermon that follows this sketch. But he was not satis- 
fied with it even in that final form. It was written for the 
Toledo Conference, and was also preached in Meadville at 
Mr. Camp's ordination. It was dictated while lying in bed 
from sheer inability to sit up. After his return from Toledo 
and Meadville he seemed better. He had met many 
friends, and had got nearer Dr. Furness than ever before. 
But he soon began to run down again. The trustees of 
the church, not realizing how sick he was, voted to keep the 
church open till the middle of July, and he would not let 
them know how much he was in need of rest. On the 4th 
of July he preached a sermon on the state of the country, 



BROOKLYN. 99 

which was printed in a pamphlet, but it was one of the 
least characteristic of his discourses. Then came the riots, 
which, with the harrying anxieties of " the battle summer " 
of 1863, drained him of his vitality at a fearful rate. When 
news of battles was expected, he wou*d walk the floor 
through the night, hanging out of the windows to catch 
the words of the news-boys with their " extras," and follow- 
ing them down the street to procure their scanty bits of in- 
telligence. When at last vacation came, it found him com- 
pletely exhausted. 

He spent the summer in Mendon, preaching several 
times in Boston, and this, too, when it seemed to those 
who were most with him that he could hardly live through 
his vacation. As his wife would sit fanning the flies away, 
lest they should shorten his precarious sleep, he would look 
so death-like, that again and again she had to listen closely 
for his breathing to assure herself he had not passed away. 
But when any one entered the room he would arouse him- 
self, and seem almost like a well man. 

He went back to Brooklyn in September, feeling that his 
vacation had done him little or no good. He staid for a 
few weeks with his good friends the Frothinghams, and 
while there found a book on consumption that convinced 
him that his days were numbered, though for months after- 
ward he would have sanguine days and even weeks. In 
October he went to Milford, close by his old home, to deli- 
ver an address before the County Agricultural Society. He 
took great joy on this occasion. At last he felt and wrote 
about it to Colly er in a real, thankful, happy-hearted way, 
that his old friends and neighbors had heard him gladly. 
The subject of his address was " The Identity of National 
and Agricultural Interests." Never did the dear home- 



100 N. A. STAPLES. 

places and the David Legg farm where he was born, and 
which he had hoped to one day own, seem so beautiful to 
him. It was well that it was so, for his eyes were not to 
feast on them again. 

He made one more great effort to keep up till after the 
Autumnal Convention in Springfield. Many remember 
how he seemed at that convention — alert with intellectual 
and spiritual power; in body, the merest shadow of 
his former self. But he hated to give up. He took a 
stretching long walk with O. B. Frothingham, and Rush 
Shippen, and A. P. Putnam, and then the secret came out 
that he had no real strength left. After the convention, 
came long peaceful days of repose and rest; beautiful 
autumnal weather, in Brooklyn always the finest weather of 
the year. The days were sunny and the house still ; hus- 
band and wife went about hand in hand ; looked into each 
other's eyes, and felt what was coming. There was no need 
to say any thing. The mornings were passed in reading 
and writing ; in the afternoons, when he did not feel able 
to go out, he would say to his wife, " Go and see such and 
such persons, and I will feel contented and lie still." When 
she returned, he would want to know all about her visitings. 
Never did he love his people with such tender love. No- 
vember 1 2 th, he wrote to Collyer : 

"As my body grows weak, my nerves grow quiet, and my 
mind grows clear, so that I have seldom or never been able to 
sit down to a book or sermon with such a keen mental appetite. 
I am writing with great ease and satisfaction. My text last 
Sunday was, 'What shall a man give in exchange for his 
soul?'" 

This does not sound as if even then he was at work on 
the last sermon he ever wrote. But so it was. The ser- 



BROOKLYN. IOI 

mon was given to showing that man's ideal is heaven's real. 
This he preached on the 15th of November. A fortnight 
earlier he had preached his second anniversary sermon, at 
the close of which he had said that all he asked for was 
health ; the church was full, and some change must soon 
be made. He would preach in the plainest hall, if only 
there could be room for all who wished to come. Novem- 
ber 2 2d, he preached for the last time. It was the sermon 
about "The Thought of the Heart" that he had written a 
year before. As he was going to church, he took up the 
dumb-bells and gave them a few feeble swings. After the 
service, the society voted him three months' absence, fearing 
that if they voted him more he would not accept any ; for 
he said he " felt ashamed to have the interests of the so- 
ciety suspended for him." The kindness of his people 
touched him deeply. 

Then came Thanksgiving. Mr. Alger preached for him, 
and O. B. Frothingham came over to go to church with him. 
It was a sad thanksgiving, for as he sat in the pulpit, his people 
looked at his sunken cheeks, and almost transparent hands, 
and felt certain that the place which had known him to such 
good purpose, would know him no more forever. The ser- 
mon the next Sunday, was a direct attack on Mr. Staples's 
theological position, the preacher not perhaps realizing that 
he would not be able to reply. But he did so want to, and 
planned a sermon for that purpose, which was never writ- 
ten, much less preached. Late in November he went to 
Meadville, and for a time seemed to recruit wonderfully. 

TO HIS WIFE. 

-" Every thing is perfect here at Mary's. It is such a comfort 
to have a room on the first floor ; and it is so still, that I feel 



102 N. A. STAPLES. 

in a kind of restful trance. Oh ! such a burden is taken off 
my nerves by being away from the noisy pavements. As I lay 
in bed this morning and listened to the stillness, it seemed as 
if I could feel rest and health, come creeping into my very 
blood and bones. I now think you were right, in thinking that 
I needed rest.' , 

But he soon relapsed into his old state. Then came the 
news of his father's death, and he came back to Brooklyn 
suddenly, expecting to go and see his mother. This was 
just before Christmas. At first he rallied a little, and then 
declined rapidly. About the first of January he became 
restless, and thought he must have a change. He was 
taken to Orange, N. J., where every thing was done to 
make him comfortable ; but he soon wanted to be taken 
home again, and was very happy when he was carried 
there, for he was unable to walk. He lay on the sofa 
for several hours that evening, delighted to see every 
one that came in, not realizing how shocked they were 
at the change ten days had made in him. His wife, fear- 
ing he would overtax his strength, asked him if he did 
not want to be carried up-stairs. He looked up with a 
bright smile and said, " Oh ! no ; I shall never come down 
again ; let me stay as long as I can." He lived just three 
weeks from that night. Knowing that a notice had been 
put in the Inquirer, that he was going to Fayal, he asked 
Dr. Farley to put in another, saying that the trip had been 
given up on account of his failing strength, " and that," he 
said, " will prepare friends far away to hear of my death." 
This faith in the love and interest of his friends was, during 
the last days, the source of all his deepest pain and sweet- 
est satisfaction. 

Very beautiful were the testimonies of affection that came 



BROOKLYN. 103 

to him as he was wearing away. The generous provision 
made by his society for his voyage to Fayal, did him a world 
of good, though the voyage had to be abandoned. Their 
solicitude was as thoughtful as it was tender. Ellen Ship- 
pen wrote to her sister at Meadville : 

" Such a relation it seems to me, never, or seldom existed, as 
this between Gus and his people. I have peeped into a heaven 
of love. Their arms of love hold him up. They have done 
their utmost to save him." 

And then came such good letters from all quarters, letters 
taking for granted that the end was near, and that he would 
meet it like a man. From Dr. Hosmer and Dr. Furness ; 
from Frothingham, and Weiss, and Freeman Clarke, and 
many others, they came in time to soothe his weariness. 
Hale's came when he was dying, too late for him to 
hear it read, and Dr. Bartol's after he had passed away. 
"Dear Staples," Dr. Bartol wrote, "I yearn to you; your 
precious presence is still in our house. It was so strong 
and good you left it behind. May you feel borne by the 
Good One you believe in. Take with you my greeting to 
those I love, out of my sight, you may meet by the way, 
and let your true loving spirit sometimes visit me, and light 
up my hopes, and touch me with the peace and joy to 
which you go." Collyer and Carlton came in person, all 
the way from their far-off homes, bringing him messages of 
affection, and getting from his strong faith and resignation, 
much needed reenforcement of their own. 

When he was going to Fayal, he began to dictate a fare- 
well letter to his people, but only a few sentences were writ- 
ten; enough, however, to show that the struggle for life was 
over, and the longing for rest had come. 



104 N. A. STAPLES. 

" Dear Parishioners and Friends : I can not leave you 
with such an indefinite future before me, without saying a sin- 
gle word of farewell. How I should like to take each one of 
you by the hand once more, and say good-by. I still hope to 
see a great many of you, although I am not able to speak even 
in a whisper ; for I know it does me good just to look into your 
faces, and feel the pressure of your hands." 

" Of the past, with its memories and hopes, I can say no- 
thing. I humbly hope that so far as it has been true, it will al- 
ways help and cheer us in some deep true way. My thoughts 
now are all for the future, and I can not deny to you, that the fu- 
ture, where there shall be no more pain nor weakness, seems 
very dear and precious to me." 

On the fifth of February, 1864, this mortal put on im- 
mortality. The end was very quiet, sweet, and solemn. He 
was watching for death, but did not seem to feel quite sure 
% .hat it was coming then. During a sinking spell, the last 
he rallied from, his wife asked him, " Are you leaving us ?" 
" I don't know," he answered in a wondering, child-like tone. 
A beautiful light passed over his face as he w T as going, and 
left it radiant, as with a smile shot backward from his eman- 
cipated spirit. 

" So when for us life's evening hour 
Soft fading shall descend, 
May glories born of earth and heaven 
The earth and heaven blend ; 

" Flooded with light the spirit float, 
With silent rapture glow, 
That where earth ends and heaven begins, 
The soul may scarcely know." 

The fifth was Friday. On Sunday, there was a simple 
farewell service in the church, Mr. Longfellow and Mr, 



BROOKLYN. 105 

Collyer taking the principal parts in it. But the silent lips 
of the dead were more eloquent than theirs, as he lay before 
the pulpit, from which he had spoken with such gentleness 
and power. On Monday, a few of the nearest and dearest 
went to Mendon with the body, Mr. Collyer going with 
them. The next Sunday, he came back to Brooklyn, and 
told the story of the burial, and the story of his friend's life 
to his stricken people. 

" The morning wore silently on toward the noon, and then 
we went into the sanctuary. There, in the most sacred place, 
on the table where he had seen the symbols of another broken 
body so often set, his lay, resting for a little while, until from 
the village, and from distant outlying farms, old friends, neigh- 
bors, and kinsmen should come to look into his face for the last 
time. They came, and they sang those good sunny hymns, that 
begin, 

'There is a land of pure delight,' 
and 

* Unveil thy bosom, faithful tomb ; 
Take this new treasure to thy trust.' 

" Most grateful words were said for such blessing as had come 
to us all in this good life now done. Men and women wept 
sore, but were better for their weeping, and spoke gratefully of 
this great gift of God that had gone out from their town. Then, 
when the sun was near the mid heaven, we laid the dust on the 
breast of the dear mother he had always loved so well. Side 
by side we folded the dust of two men, the father and the son 
together. And the first words I read, engraven on a white 
stone, as I turned away, were the name of still another kins- 
man buried there, a quaint old pious New-England name 
1 Welcome Staples ;' but I accepted it as a sign ; it seemed like 
a l well done,' after the weariness and sickness and pain, a 
whisper of the welcome' that had greeted him in the heavens ; 



106 N. A. STAPLES. 

of the terrestrial here, the celestial there ; weakness here, yon- 
der power ; death lost in victory." 

Such was the burial, and for the life, though every word 
of the story about that was true and beautiful, this seems 
to be the truest and most beautiful of all : 

" With a most genuine reverence for every true revelation of 
God through another, when once he had come to his perfect 
stature as a man, my friend held in deep reverence the revela- 
tion which came directly from God into his own soul. He ac- 
cepted no high-priest, no, not even the highest, to bring him to 
God, or God to him. What we call miracle, or rather what 
we claim for miracles, fell away from his soul ; in his vaster 
thought, he found no place for them. Sharp words were writ- 
ten to him by an eminent doctor of our church, for things said 
in the Easter sermon he printed, especially about the way he 
had interpreted the doctrine of the resurrection. He was no 
more to blame for not holding on to what he had once held, 
and what his critic held, on this subject, than the apple-tree is 
to blame for not holding its blossoms after the fruit has begun 
to set. ' Whatsoever things are true] was the watchword of 
his ministry, the mark for the prize of his high calling. I think, 
beyond all I have ever known, he trusted with most absolute 
trust, joyful and constant, the nearness, fullness, and what I 
must call the adequacy of God. In the uneasy, feverish seek- 
ing after God, the running to and fro to hunt up new proofs of 
him, the timid, wavering wonder whether he can be here and 
there, or do this or that, he had no part or lot. Goer lifted him, 
at last, into the perfect assurance. ' I am in the Father, and 
the Father in me,' was the supreme and final rest found, about 
the time he came to be your minister, and from that time, 
through all his days of sickness and failing strength, never lost 
for one moment again ; the Father, tender and loving beyond 
the loving tenderness of a mother for her child, the Father 
meeting us everywhere in our wandering, sin, and sorrow, as in 



BROOKLYN. I 07 

our loyalty, purity, and joy ; supremely good in his most flam- 
ing judgments, as in his most infinite mercies, everywhere 
and always our Father, in heaven, on the earth, and in hell. 
And that is some poor hint of the man, my friend and your 
minister, in his loftiest relation to God and to you." 

In token of remembrance, the Milwaukee Society have 
purchased Mr. Staples's library, which though not large, or 
very well selected, was an epitome of his growth, and con- 
tained some books that were to him the bread of life. The 
Brooklyn Society have placed upon the walls of their church 
an illuminated tablet of great beauty, recording the dates of 
his birth, installation, and death, with the text, " As many 
as are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God." 
On the sunny slope in Mendon, a broad-based, severely 
simple monument of white marble marks his resting place, 
and symbolizes, as well as such things can, the purity of his 
life, its severe simplicity, and how firmly based it was in na- 
ture, man, and God. We speak of "the cold marble;" but 
when I stood by this monument, one summer day, the sun 
had crept into its very heart; and that was well, for nothing 
cold could adequately symbolize so warm a heart as this 
man carried in his breast. But he has other monuments 
than these. They are minds quickened by his thought, 
hearts touched by his sympathy, souls inspired by his faith, 
lives made more pure, and strong, and holy, by the word 
that in him was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we 
beheld its glory, full of grace and truth. 



SERMONS, 



LIFE. 

" Your life is hid with Christ in God."— Col. 3 ; 3. 

This text marks four steps in the growth of the thought 
which I wish to give you : Life ; hidden life ; life hid with 
Christ ; and life hid in God. 

Life is closely allied to the most central fact. If it is not 
being, it is the condition on which being passes into mani- 
festation, and all attempts to retrace the steps of this process 
are sooner or later baffled by the mystery of life. So close 
is its affinity with existence that we can interpose between 
them no means of knowing what the one is apart from the 
other. 

All the standard definitions of life define its modes, and 
not its essence. Schelling says, " Life is the tendency to 
individuation." But this only defines a process, and not its 
cause. Where individuation is, there may be life ; but that 
process is not life, it is only a sign of life. Richerand 
says, " Life is a collection of phenomena, which succeed 
each other during a limited time in an organized body ;" 
which is another statement of the signs by which the pre- 
sence of life may be known. G. H. Lewes defines life as a 
series of definite and successive changes of structure and 
composition, which take place within an individual without 



112 SERMONS. 

destroying its identity. But this only adds other signs of life, 
without saying any thing of what it is which produces this 
series of definite and successive changes. And all the defi- 
nitions which I can find are open to the same criticism, that 
they describe the signs and not the essence of life. The 
proem to John's Gospel gives a very different definition. 
It says that in God there was life, and when that life passed 
into manifestation, it became the light of men, and was the 
true light, lighting every man which cometh into the world ; 
that true light shining in the darkness of all time, giving 
to those who could comprehend it, power to become sons 
of God. This is, indeed, no definition to satisfy the exact 
sciences; but it is one of those guesses of genius which 
penetrates to the absolute unity, and anticipates, by many 
centuries, the last synthesis of the understanding. 

The positive sciences seem to be approaching, by sure and 
rapid steps, the resolution of all phenomena into evolutions 
of simple force. The separate forces — heat, electricity, mag- 
netism, light, and chemical action — are. not, as once thought, 
ultimate and distinct realities, but are different forms of the 
same force, and are convertible into each other. Time and 
space are not ultimate realities, but only the necessary con- 
ditions of force. Matter is not an ultimate reality, but only 
another condition of force. We have no knowledge of 
matter except as combinations of forces. The chemist's ulti- 
mate atom is a figure of speech, the boldest poetic license. 
We can have no conception of an atom which is not still a 
compound of forces. The atomic theory of Dalton can go 
no further than to say that all chemical forces are related to 
each other in fixed mathematical proportions. The force of 
oxygen compared with the force of hydrogen is as eight to 
one ; compared with carbon, as eight to six ; with sulphur, as 



LIFE. 113 

eight to sixteen, and so on. But of the ultimate chemical 
atom it can say nothing, because it can know nothing. It 
only knows that oxygen force combines with other forces in 
proportions of eight and multiples of eight, and never in 
any other way \ and yet from the combination of • these 
forces is formed all that we call matter. Hence the substra- 
tum of materialism is spiritualism. The materialist can no 
longer take a pebble and say, "Here is reality; here is 
something which we know, and have no doubt about." For 
what is it that is real in the pebble, and what do we know- 
about it? It is so much form, color, weight, brittleness, 
taste, and so on. That is, it is something which has power 
to produce in us a sensation of taste ; the power to produce 
a sensation of color; the power to produce a sensation 
of weight, brittleness, extension, and so on. Or, in other 
words, it is a combination of so many forces ; and further 
than that we know nothing about it, and can know nothing 
about it ; for matter which is any thing else than a degree 
or quality of force, is unknowable and unthinkable. It is a 
curious fact that this old issue between materialism and 
spiritualism should have been decided in favor of spirit- 
ualism by science itself, which seeks nothing outside of 
matter. 

As this great synthesis of philosophy goes on to its com- 
pletion, the religious insight and thought will dwell with in- 
creasing interest upon this great principle of force, out of 
which has been evolved all that is, and will be evolved all 
that is to be ; that principle, conditioned always by matter, 
time, and space, but caused by nothing conditional ; that 
mysterious principle, in which rested at the beginning all the 
possibilities of creation, worlds on worlds, systems on sys- 
tems, all forms inanimate and animate in existence, the 
8 



114 SERMONS. 

highest modes of being in this world, and those higher modes 
which we hope for hereafter. 

Now, if science attributes all these results to force, reli- 
gion will be very busy with its old analogies of life. She 
will say that the philosopher's infinite force is but another 
term for religion's infinite life. She will wonder if that force 
is not the Word which was in the beginning, by which all 
things were made ; she will wonder if it is not the life 
which is the light of men ; if it is not the light which lighted 
every man that cometh into the world ; if it has not been 
shining in all the darkness, not comprehended by the dark- 
ness, yet always making of those rare, pure souls who could 
comprehend it sons and daughters of God. One is tempted 
to hazard a prophecy even now, that the dispute between 
philosophy and religion will at last resolve itself into a ques- 
tion of terms, whether this force into which philosophy re- 
solves all phenomena is not the very life of God immanent 
in matter and mind. 

To this mystery of life, then, we look with new wonder 
and hope ; for it is the great hope. Because God's life has 
been in the world, it has not failed ; and because his life is 
in it now, it can not fail; and because it must always be in it, 
it will never fail. There is hope so long as there is life, and 
there is life so long as there is God. 

We are always running anxiously with our nostrums, and 
tonics, and pills to save nature; we fear and tremble at 
the general dissolution, and doubt, and death which seem 
near at hand. But chaos does not come back ; humanity 
does not turn atheist nor infidel; the machinery of progress 
does not stop ; because there is a soundness of heart in hu- 
manity, a light of life in man, a living spirit in the wheels 
of things which makes the hand that marks the hours of 



LIFE. IIS 

growth move forever forward on the dial, whether the pen- 
dulum which ticks the seconds be swinging to or fro. 

Jesus saw a new hope for the world, because he had come 
that men might have life, and have it more abundantly. 
And the highest reward which he offered to fidelity was, 
that through it we shall enter into life. " This do, and 
thou shalt live." And each important era in the history of 
his truth and the growth of his kingdom has been marked 
by the accession of some new life ; ' sometimes rude, wicked, 
barbarian life it was ; but still new life, and with it came new 
hope. From the east and the west, from the north and the 
south, this force has come in to drive out children of the 
kingdom, and to share the inheritance of Abraham, Isaac, 
and Jacob. There is not a doctrine of the church which 
does not bear, to this day, traces of that poetic, mystic, 
acute, oriental life which it met at Alexandria in the first 
three centuries. There is not a form, nor a sacrament, nor 
an observance which does not bear the mark of the practi- 
cal, politic, sensuous western life, through which it passed in 
Rome and Western Europe. There is scarcely a permanent 
result of civilization which has not grown directly or indi- 
rectly out of the accession to the worn-out life of Christen- 
dom of that terrible Indo- Germanic force which burst from 
its forest gates in the fifth and sixth centuries, and poured 
its great tides into the shriveled veins of Southern Europe . 
Such is the life which has come into the kingdom of God 
from the east, and the west, and the north. It remains for 
this age, we hope, to see the fourth and last promise fulfilled 
by the coming to the side of the life of Asia, Europe, and 
America, the warm, loyal, patient life of Africa. It remains 
for us to welcome to the kingdom, this remarkable type of 
ethnic life, which has hitherto lent itself with such patience 



Il6 SERMONS. 

to the insolence and oppression of the other races ; a type of 
life in some respects the richest and best on earth — cordial, 
loving, musical, courageous, as if its native sunshine and 
sun-warmth had crystallized in the very globules of its blood. 

Let us never despair while there is life. The first ques- 
tion to ask about the promise of an age, or a nation, or an 
institution, or an individual, is, How much life has it ? Even 
before the question of quality comes this of quantity ; fee- 
bleness and sickliness may be very proper; they may never 
break a law, nor doubt a dogma, nor shock society, but 
they give small promise of future greatness. If our church 
has life, it will make itself a history, it will find itself a form, 
it will rally from its rebuffs, and outlive its changes. No 
matter if its life shows itself now in rude, strange ways ; it 
will some time find its level among the checks and balances 
of its own activities. 

This is the question which we have to ask ourselves as 
men and women, How much life have we ? Not merely 
physical life ; " for the life is more than meat ;" but, Are all 
the energies of our nature awake ? Is the mind reaching 
everywhere for truth ? Does conscience ask of each act 
its own clear question, " Is it right ?" Does the heart go 
out generously in love toward all that is lovely, and draw 
around itself all sweet and pure things ? Does the soul 
keep a clear outlook through life and nature to God ? Is 
it sensitive to the touch of those influences which come 
about it in choice moods, and make the air musical with 
their murmur, " and for days thereafter filf the soul with 
harp-like laughter " ? This is the test of salvation. If 
one has this full and entire life, though he have along 
with it much that is bad, and imperfect, and false, in due 
time all things which he lacks will be added unto him. 



LIFE. 117 

u 'Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
Oh ! life, not death, for which we pant ; 
More life, and fuller, that I want." 

Life has two ways of working — the hidden and the reveal- 
ed, the outer and the inner, the phenomenal and essential. 
It is not the least of its mysteries that, however far back we 
trace its steps, there is still a law within a law, a life within 
a life, which we can not find, but which is the source of all 
that we can find. It is always the hidden life which gives 
tone, and force, and reality to the outer life. It is the things 
not seen which establish or bring to naught the things that 
are. The planet and the pebble rest with equal ease in the 
just balance of hidden forces which, if shaken a little from 
their subtle poise, would shatter the universe. Each age 
values itself by its outward life of thought, and deed, and 
discipline. But history soon forgets all that, and values the 
age for the hidden life that was in it, of which the age had 
not dreamed, except through the prophets whom it stoned. 
No age seems romantic to itself. It is only in the after 
time that men find what music and strange rhythm there was 
in those days so dull to the multitudes. 

And. we all make this same mistake in our estimate of life. 
When we count our resources, or estimate our success, or 
question the fitness of our discipline, we seldom think that 
our best resources are hidden; that our truest strength comes 
we know not how nor whence ; that sometimes when we are 
weakest, then is our strength made perfect ; we seldom think 
that our best success is seen in nothing which we can put 
into figures or words; a success which has been wrested 
from the failure of all the world calls success ; success in 
finding a great wealth of hidden life. We seldom think 
that that discipline is most fit which defeats our false ambi- 



Il8 SERMONS. 

tions and checks our fevered haste, and brings us home to 
ourselves and bids us be still and know God. 

How this inner life makes itself felt everywhere ! Its pre- 
sence or absence marks the widest difference there is in cha- 
racters. It matters not what fine things a man's outer life 
is dressed in ; if they are not pressed out full at every nook 
and corner, they seem outrageous. If your friend's house is 
bigger than his heart or handsomer, you would soon rather 
be in jail than to be there. It matters not how perfect a 
man's equipments of culture and convenience are, nor with 
what props and clamps of family and fortune he may be 
held up, if he has not the warm, earnest life of the Spirit, 
(a gift not of flesh and blood, but of the Holy Ghost,) he 
will soon give out that ring of sounding brass against which 
fine souls stop their ears. It matters not what creed he 
accepts, nor what ritual worships for him, if he has not felt 
God's presence in beauty, love, and truth ; if his heart does 
not leap up when he beholds a rainbow in the sky ; if he 
has not felt the thrill and glow which come from a sense of 
oneness with the infinite law and infinite love, he might as 
well be a " pagan suckled in a creed outworn." 

But, on the other hand, wherever this inner life is, there 
are beauty, comfort, culture, worship. If your friend's heart 
is large enough, his hovel will seem like a palace ; if his 
inner life is rich enough and childlike enough, it will always 
give you food for thought ; and if his soul has exchanged 
look and answer with God, wherever he sleeps there is 
Bethel, and though his pillow be but a stone, there the 
angels ascend and descend. 

Oh ! the charm there is about these lives which are hid. 
What repose, what strength, what cheer ! We look upon 
them as we look into deep rivers, and wonder how deep 



LIFE. 119 

they are, and to what height they would rise if resisted. 
We get near them in trouble, for their quiet cools our fever; 
their discipline never seems mysterious. The stream of 
change runs through their lives as the mountain brook runs 
through the miner's sieve, washing away quartz and sand, 
but leaving the grains of gold in deeper waters below. How 
poor all other success seems when compared with this of a 
tender, prophetic spirit life ! If a minister has it, you give 
yourself up to him as soon as he opens his lips. Men and 
women break through all hedges of form and creed, and go 
to his baptism, though he preach in the wilderness or by 
a wayside well. If a preacher have not this hidden life, if 
he has never wrestled with the mystery of existence, he is a 
false prophet. He may preach doctrines ably and use forms 
ingeniously; but he can no more touch the springs of life, 
nor quench the thirst of souls, than he can draw water from 
an empty well by some ingenious contrivance of bucket and 
windlass. 

We apply the same tests to books which treat of life. A 
few chapters will tell us if the author's heart is burning and 
breaking with the message which can not be uttered. If it 
is, the unuttered will fill the words with their pressure of 
thought. The sentences of J^ane Eyre throb, as if ready to 
break, with the woes of life. One reads between the lines a 
great suppressed existence which palpitates all through the 
book, and feels, at its close, that the half has not been told. 
But there is no such reserve power about a novel of Scott. 
The style of one goes gracefully on in search of thought, 
like a gentleman of leisure taking his morning walk. The 
style of the other steps on haltingly under its burden of life, 
like a farmer boy carrying sacks of wheat. 

When a writer can express all that he feels and knows, he 



120 SERMONS. 

has touched his climax; and after that, no luxuriance of 
style can supply the loss of that untold sorrow and hope 
which would never go into words, and which were woe to 
him if he preached not his gospel. God takes care that 
every man who has life gets utterance, though his tongue be 
silent and his hand palsied. Sensations have their day, but 
the things not seen are eternal. 

There is a rocket which goes up with a scream, burns 
itself out in rising, and falls a piece of burnt paper. There 
is another which is shot into the air a ball of silent fire, and 
when we think its force all spent, it bursts into a cloud of 
light, and falls in a shower of golden rain. How many re- 
volutions, reforms, books, and men, has history seen rise and 
fall like the former! How many too, like the latter, have 
thrown their ball of truth into the pure spaces of thought, 
where, just as men clapped their hands and said it would 
come to nothing more, it has burst into showers of light, 
and rained its beauty on the unbelieving world ! 

Jesus brought life and immortality to light. They were 
already in the souls of men, half hid in darkness ; when he 
touched them, they came out into light. Immortality came 
with the new life. It came because of the new life, just as 
the juices of summer bring into light the bloom and fruit 
which were hid all winter in the bud. It is no wonder that 
those men thought they had been born again, when they 
felt the strength and wealth of this hidden treasure. We 
think our orchards born again each spring-time ; but it is the 
eternal miracle of life, ever new and old. 

One does not wonder that the friends of Jesus quite forgot 
to write much about him for half a century after his death. 
Or, perhaps they did think of it, but would not try to put in 
words what was so unutterable. Peter, we are told, refused, 



LIFE. 121 

to the last, to write one word about his Master. He thought, 
no doubt, that it was idle to think of preserving, in such 
earthen vessels, the waters of a perennial fountain opened 
in every soul. After the hearts of the disciples had burned 
within them for fifty years, they gave us some snatches, hints, 
and fragments of what they had seen and heard ; very un- 
satisfactory, no doubt, to them all ; yet they builded better 
than they knew. 

But the critic who comes to these Gospels with nothing 
but logic and lexicon, gets no more idea of the life which 
created them than a mason patching the walls of a house 
gets of the sweet Christian home which nestles within. 
Hence, the men who are now doing most to bring out the 
real life of Christ are men who go to the work in love, and 
sympathy, and reverence ; men who are filled with the same 
life which Christ had ; who look through the Gospels and 
between the lines of the Epistles as through so many win- 
dows opening into the life of that strange and wonderful 
time. 

For this hidden life is truly called a life with Christ. It is 
here that we meet him, if at all. Such a life is hid where his 
life was hid — in God. This is the one channel in which all 
true souls run. The sweet and subtle fellowship of life is 
the free-masonry of spirit. It is the only membership in the 
church universal. 

Here we are to look for the true continuity of church 
history. Its outward expression changes with the ages, and 
with the habits, culture, and quality of individuals ; but the 
inner want, which tries to get expression through all religions, 
all churches, all dogmas, is the same. Hence it is that all 
religions and sects get nearest to each other in their devo- 
tions, The prayers and hymns which spring from the hid- 



122 SERMONS. 

den life of all people are easily used by each one. The 
reason is obvious. Men cry out of one heart for the living 
God, and every soul feels the same hunger and thirst ; but 
when they try to put the feeling into thoughts, and words, 
and symbols, they must use such as they find around them, 
in China, Persia, Turkey, Rome, Geneva, Oxford, or Am- 
herst. 

This is not peculiar to the history of religion. The same 
facts are seen in the growth of each fundamental want of our 
nature, and the general idea which controls its activity. If 
we were to look for that which the industry of all time and 
people has had in common, we should not find it in the 
plows, hoes, axes, and scythes which have been used in all 
past ages ; we should find it in the abstract idea of the useful 
which tried to express itself in these different implements. 
If we should try to find the continuity of the history of 
government, we should not find it in the different forms of 
society which have had their day since the race began ; but 
we should find it in the abstract idea of the just, which tried 
to express itself in all these imperfect forms of organized 
society. The history of art presents the same phenomena. 
The different ages and places have had their sects and 
schools, but all have had the same moving impulse — the 
idea of the beautiful. It is not strange, therefore, that reli- 
gion should present the same features of history which we 
find in the growth of all fundamental wants. In creed, and 
form, and holy days, it must needs be that one should say, 
" I am of Paul," and another, " I am of Apollos." The true 
union is a union of spirit, and a bond of peace. The true 
fellowship among brethren who differ in gift and faith, as 
the hand from the foot, or the ear from the eye, is a fellow- 
ship of that perfect love which casteth out all fear. We 



LIFE. 123 

can have no dominion over each other's faith; we can be 
great helpers of each other's joy. 

And all the real experiences of life bring us back to this 
one conviction, that the hidden life is the life with Christ, 
the life with all the good and true of earth and heaven. 
When we weep, we ask not about the creed of him who 
weeps with us ; and when we rejoice, we do not care for 
the creed of him who rejoices with us. In days of ease 
and success, when we sleep soft and wake merrily, and our 
hearts are waxed light, we make a pastime of building our 
creed play-houses, and saying no one ever had such fine 
ones; but when the hour of trouble comes, when our 
hearts break and our hands fail, we leap out of these 
houses, and look about for loving hearts. We meet all 
creeds by death-beds, and at festive scenes, and on ex- 
change, and in all real experiences. If you should stop a 
joyous company of men and women who are at one with 
each other in some good human impulse, and say, " Each 
ten of you believe the other ninety are lost souls !" each 
one would start up as from a happy dream, and begin to 
say, " Lord, is it I ?" In ninety-nine moods out of a hun- 
dred most communities have a common impulse and a 
common fellow-feeling; but the other mood is the queer 
theological fit, and that makes a difference. 

It is cheering to see the loyal churches of this country 
forgetting their differences to unite in a common cause of 
charity and love. In Brooklyn, nearly sixty churches of 
different creeds meet and work together. Thus, a common 
trouble brings us back to that common life where we meet 
Christ and all who are his. And any man who is so dead 
to the prophecy of the age that he can waste these great 
historic days in whettin'g his sectarian sword, and drilling 



124 SERMONS. 

his squads of proselytes, and making war on the great army 
of disciples who are too busy doing good, to defend them- 
selves, is a rebel toward God, and Christ, and humanity; 
he is a mere Don Quixote, fighting wind-mills which are 
grinding corn for a whole people. 

All earnest men and women are drawing nearer and 
nearer to a common hope and a common inspiration. 
They are feeling, as they have seldom felt, the riches of 
this common life hid with Christ. They feel themselves 
upheld by it when the outer life fails them. It is a calm, 
warm shelter from the noise and fever of the world. It is a 
light shining in the darkness. It brings them into a more 
sweet and tender union with all good and true souls about 
them. It is regrouping society in new and better relations. 
Those who have tasted the blessed life belong to the invisi- 
ble church, whose ties are bound on earth and in heaven. 
Thousands of its members have never seen each other ; but 
they know each other — they are friends, and belong to one 

family. 

"Where now with pain thou treadest, trod 
The whitest of the saints of God. 
And that great Life, transfused in theirs, 
Awaits thy faith, thy love, thy prayers." 

And finally, it is said that this life is hid in God. This life, 
which first appeared in force, rising up through all kinds of 
existence, at last becomes conscious of itself, and goes back 
again to its source in free consecrated thought and love. 
Placed by birth at the furthest remove of weakness from 
God, man struggles back to him through a discipline which 
brings him more and more to himself, and gives him the 
new and entirely unique gift of personality ; and when he 
comes to himself, he goes to his Father. 



LIFE. 125 

Life ultimates in God from instinct, from weakness, and 
from reflection. 

And first of all, the finite hides itself in the infinite from 
simple instinct. The original religious impulse is like the 
first cry for food, or the first effort of art or government — 
the simple reaching out of the soul to find something to 
feed upon. And to the end of life this instinct is seldom 
superseded by a better motive. One may, for a time, ex- 
change the simple impulse to worship for some motive of 
policy or principle, just as one may, for a time, eat by rule 
and measure ; but the healthful nature learns to trust more 
and more to instinct, and worships because he loves to 
worship, and when and where he feels like worship. Fine 
souls will always love to feel that their lives are hid in God. 
They will feel it in bright hours of clear sight, when they 
see the infinite life embracing, guiding, and blessing all 
things. They will feel it in the hours of inspiration, when 
truth and beauty seem so near they dare not say that they 
think for themselves. They will feel it when they are alone, 
and say that they are not alone, but 'God is with them. 
They will feel it also in sorrow, trial, and doubt. Then 
there is no comfort until they hide themselves in God, and 
see that he is the only light which casts these shadows from 
events. It is an instinct which outlives all changes in 
theology and religion ; an instinct which has seen a thou- 
sand philosophies live and die around it, and yet is clearer 
and surer to-day than it ever was before. For it is the irre- 
sistible impulse of that life which came from God, to return 
to and recognize him in the last and highest possible form 
of life — conscious love and trust. 

This life hides itself in God from weakness. No man 
can carry the burdens which it will compel him to take up, 



126 SERMONS. 

without asking himself whether he must carry them all 
alone, or whether the universe is not made so that it will 
take up every true thing and help him carry it. If he car- 
ries on the war which this life will compel him to wage 
against error and sin, he will learn to trust in that wisdom 
which works in the structure of things. He will learn to 
hide his weakness in its strength ; to reckon his resources 
by its laws ; to trust it for the success of each good work, 
and the fulfillment of each pure hope. He will cling to life 
in the midst of death. When the present hope fails ; when 
bad men prosper ; when the bad cause gains ; when events 
mock at Providence, and the hour contradicts the age, then 
he must take shelter in the thought of infinite life, " He is 
the God of the living and not of the dead." To his universe 
no force can be added, and from it none can be taken away ; 
for it is full of his life. Because he lives, all which true life 
seeks must live also. And so long as men try to make life 
God-like, as Christ did, they will hide their lives, from sheer 
weakness, where Christ's was hid— in God. 

And this life ultimates in God also, through the necessity 
of thought. The mind can not give up its old faith that 
the creation has a cause beyond itself, and a cause greater 
than its greatest effects. Nor will it yield to the jeer of 
philosophy that other faith, as old as the first — that effects 
into which no element enters which was not wanted by the 
cause, give us some hints of the nature of the cause. And 
among the effects of creation, the highest and most wonder- 
ful are the cravings of this life of thought — this conviction 
that there is something better than the best of the world ; 
something more beautiful than its beauty ; something truer 
than its truth. It is not in the nature of thought to rest 
until it has made this last sublime synthesis of all diversity 



LIFE. 127 

in one living, intelligent unity. It can not rest until it has 
fled from all the discord of life's detail, and hid itself in the 
harmony of God. Is it not wonderful that this thought of 
the Infinite should have ever crept into the thought and 
language of a being so frail as man ? It did not come 
through the senses. No eye has ever seen, no ear heard, 
no hand touched the Deity. It did not come from ex- 
perience, for all men have been reared in the same rigid 
regularity of law. It did not come from reasoning, for the 
best thinker of to-day can not logically account for the 
strength and clearness of his own belief in God. And yet 
men in all times, in all languages, have thought and written 
about God. From the rustling of a leaf, or the creaking 
or a limb of a tree, or a sudden flash of light on some other 
little, trivial event, men have sprung to the sublime conclu- 
sion of the existence of overruling powers, and the pre- 
sence of a spirit -world peopled with the immortal dead. 
Against the senses, against experience, without reasoning, 
men have had this great thought of God ; they have clung 
to it in life and death ; they have tried to group all facts 
around it as their permanent centre. And to-day it fills the 
world's thought and sustains its hope more fully and se- 
curely than ever before. Religion, in its most child-like 
instincts, can have nothing to fear from thought in its most 
rigid methods ; for they are the same life running through 
different channels to hide itself in the same God. 

This, friends, is my thought concerning the life which is 
hid with Christ in God. I have already spoken too long ; 
but the subject is so central that there is no end to 
its suggestions. It is the one thought beside which we 
ought to measure ourselves and estimate our discipline. 
As the changes of our experience go on, if we find that we 



128 SERMONS. 

gain more and more life of mind, heart, and soul, it matters 
little what else we lose. We may fail in our affairs, we may 
come far short of our aim, we may die with our plans half- 
finished; but if through toil, and tears, and struggle we 
have found the " good part," the " pearl of great price," the 
" treasure in heaven," all is well. This is the compensation 
for the inequalities of fortune, the key to the mysteries of 
discipline. 

At a recent concert in Brooklyn, Gottschalk, the pianist, 
played a fantasia, into which he introduced the air of 
" Sweet Home." One of its variations was an instrumental 
wonder. He struck the keys powerfully, and threw out a 
great volume of tone, which, as a whole, was neither major 
nor minor, concord nor discord, harmony nor melody. 
You could, indeed, detect in it elements of melody and 
harmony; but before the ear could combine and enjoy 
them, they were lost in the roar of the chromatics. By a 
skillful use of the pedal the player soon hushed the discords, 
and caught, on a few open keys, the pure tones of the sim- 
ple melody. And, if you listened carefully, you soon heard 
an undertone, like an echo, singing from afar, the old fami- 
liar air. It seemed to say to me, " Out of that discord 
which gave you such pain sprang the life of these vibra- 
tions which are singing ' Sweet Home.' " 

Life seems to me sometimes like that variation. Man, 
in his haste to grasp the object of each passion, strikes every 
key in its tremendous octaves. The instrument raves with 
its vibrations. At first the sound gives nothing but pain. 
We can indeed detect elements of harmony, and melody, 
and pure tone ; but they flit so quickly among the strug- 
gling discords that they give us less pleasure than pain. 
But if we listen, from the hidden life of the spirit we soon 



LIFE. 129 

detect an undertone into which the discords pour their 
dying vibrations, singing, like an echo, the reconciliation 
of events, the song of " Home, sweet home " — the song 
the morning stars still sing in tune with angels' voices, 
" Glory to God, good-will to man." 

9 



II. 

KNOWLEDGE THROUGH LOSS AND 
SEPARATION. 

" Nevertheless I tell you the truth ; it is expedient for you that I go away : 
for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you ; but if I depart, I 
will send him unto you. 

" Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth." 
—John 16 : 7, 13. 

I must think that there was a touch of sorrow in the 
tone with which Jesus uttered these words, nearly akin to 
despair. For think with what argument, and persuasion, 
and entreaty he had tried to fix the hearts of his friends 
upon the truth and the right, and not upon his bodily form 
and presence ! How he had repeated the declaration again 
and again, that he was only the agent of God ; the instru- 
ment of inevitable spirit-law ; the finite example of an infi- 
nite mercy, and justice, and love. In every possible way 
he had tried to force this truth upon them. They thought 
their Messiah immortal on the earth; but he said, " I shall 
be put to death by these religious sects, whose hypocrisy I 
have rebuked." They thought he would be a great king; 
but he said, " The Son of Man has not where to lay his 
head." They thought he would call to his aid a legion of an- 
gels, if need were, to fight for him ; but he said, " My king- 
dom is not of this world, else would my servants fight for me." 
They said, " Show us the Father ;" and he said, " The Fa- 
ther can not be seen, except as his nature is seen in the na- 



KNOWLEDGE THROUGH LOSS AND SEPARATION. I3I 

ture of goodness, beauty, truth." At one time he illustrat- 
ed his meaning by saying, that he was merely a door through 
which their mind, and thought, and love, might go in and 
out, and find pasture. At another time he says, " I am 
only the vine of which ye are the branches ; but my Father 
is the husbandman. He is the soil, the air, the light, the 
moisture in which we all grow and have our being." Again, 
he says, "lam the way, the truth, the life, by which men 
go to the Father." But neither statement, nor argument, 
nor illustration could turn their thoughts from the form, and 
voice, and bodily presence of one they loved so much, to 
that higher fact of which these were the symbol ; and still 
they clung to the hope that he would restore the kingdom 
to Israel. They could not cut the rope which held them 
fast in the haven of his friendship, and strike out into the 
great ocean of truth, and beauty, and love, steered alone by 
his spirit and truth. Yet he knew, and taught, that there 
was no other way for them to inherit eternal life than to do 
as he had done. And after all forms of speech had been 
exhausted, to prove that God was the sole Infinite Spirit, 
and he was a door by which souls were to find him, Philip 
says, " Show us the Father, and that will satisfy us." From 
that moment, Jesus seems to have seen that it was best that 
he should leave them ; that they would not be able to con- 
ceive of the absolute reality until it became associated with 
his invisible life ; that while he was with them, he was away 
from them; and could not meet them again, until they met 
him on the plane of his truth, and love, and hope; until 
they should suffer, and weep, and rejoice for principle. 
Then he could meet them, and they him. Then he re- 
counted the trials the truth would cost them, as if half 
regretting that it must be so. " The world will hate you ; 



I32 SERMONS. 

but remember that it hated me before it hated you. They 
will put you out of the synagogues, and they will kill 
you, in the service of God. But because I have told you 
these things, sorrow hath filled your hearts. Nevertheless 
I tell you the truth ; it is best for you that I go away ; for 
if I go not away, the Comforter will not come to you. 
When the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all 
truth." 

And so it proved. They were never further from their 
Master than when, with dull eyes and heavy ears, they stood 
close by his side, and saw his face, and heard his word, and 
knew not that it was Jesus. But when he was gone from 
them, and all their proud hopes and vain ambitions were 
buried in his tomb, then they retired to their own souls, 
their central life of thought and love, and there they met 
him, and they said ; " Lo ! he was with us by the wayside, 
and we knew him not." And when they began to look 
around for the result of the loved life, and found that it was 
all given to their keeping, in nothing more tangible than 
thought, and spirit, and principle, they were roused by every 
motive of common friendship to stand up and vindicate it. 
And when, for this fidelity, they met with hatred, and stripes, 
and flames, and prison-bolts, then he came to them as never 
before, and their eyes were opened, and they knew him. 
Poor disciples ! But poor we, as well ! For their case is 
ours, because it is that of human nature. The things which 
are close around us, which we look upon daily, and regard 
as close companions, lose their best meaning as the symbols 
of spirit and thought. It is only when sickness, or failure, 
or death has given them distance and perspective, that we be- 
gin to see that their greatest worth was hidden by familiarity. 
The last reach of spirit-culture is the power of holding 



KNOWLEDGE THROUGH LOSS AND SEPARATION. 1 33 

common things off in the spaces of thought, so as to see 
them as they are, and as they will seem to us when taken 
away. It is our weakness that makes the discipline through 
which the disciples passed ever necessary to us. For it 
must be possible for us to look upon blessings, while yet 
they are ours, as if they were God's talents at interest. 
It is possible to regard friends, home, wealth, opportunity 
in relation to the end they are meant to serve in our tuition 
We may see in the child we play with daily, the angel 
we should think of if the child were taken away; in the 
wife or husband who shares life with us, that wealth of love 
and blessedness which we shall see and realize when they 
are dead. It is possible to enter into the treasures of health 
and appropriate the air, and sun, and sky, and stars, and 
free motions, as we appreciate them when we are sick and 
see no sun, nor sky, nor stars. But we do not do it. We 
are always looking far away for pearls which are sprinkled 
thick in the common road we walk in. We wait for some 
miracle of mercy, and see not that it is fresh every morning, 
and renewed every evening. We think only of the visible ; 
we do not penetrate to the inner law, which is the light of 
setting suns and the life of earnest souls, and is not subject 
to change. We all talk of angels and saints; did you 
never think that there is not a home, however homely, which 
has not in it the germ of angels and saints ? yea, real saints 
and angels, as you shall believe them if God takes from you 
the outward form, that oftentimes annoys, and distresses, 
and separates. 

" Alas ! we think not what we daily see 
About our hearths — angels, that are to be, 
Or may be, if they will, and we prepare 
Their souls and ours to meet in happy air— 



134 SERMONS. 

A child, a friend, a wife, whose soft heart sings 
In unison with ours, breeding its future wings." 



The world is always looking for a coming man as unlike 
real men as wings would make him ; but it sees and hails 
only the going man. One often thinks, when he sees the 
kid-glove hero-worshipers who have no sympathy with liv- 
ing heroes on account of their roughness, what would these 
adorers have done had they lived when their hero did? 
All the men who are crowned with leaf and blossom from 
the tree of life were men who were heirs to all the ills and 
annoyances of flesh and blood. Some were wild and reck- 
less, torn by their muse as he had been a demon or fury. 
Some were cold and stony, and would not see you in the 
street, nor seek your society nor your opinion ; and that 
while they were the instruments of some great social truth 
which would warm and bless all coming time with good-will 
and good cheer. And some were wicked and miserable in 
life, as if the flint of their genius could only give out the 
consuming fire of truth when struck against the cold steel 
of sin. And others were stern, caustic, and contentious 
men, who rebuked every form and agent of wrong, and, 
thrusting through the iron harness of show, and cant, and 
conformity, pricked the very vitals of iniquity. They trou- 
bled their friends, they vexed their enemies ; they shocked 
the prudent, and confounded the wise ; and seldom have 
the great men, the saints and heroes, been recognized as 
such by common consent until they were so surely dead, 
and so securely buried, that there was not the slightest dan- 
ger of their saying something to shock their friends, or of 
their espousing some cause which was not popular at court. 
Nor is this wholly wrong. Sin is not the less sinful because 



KNOWLEDGE THROUGH LOSS AND SEPARATION. 1 35 

a genius sins ; nor are coarseness and ill-breeding less offen- 
sive, because saints are sometimes wrapped in such mean 
disguise. But the wrong is in forgetting that this treasure is 
always given to us in earthen vessels, but the power is not 
the less of God. 

To those who walk beside them, great men seem mere 
common earth ; but distance makes them stars. We hear 
of a great man, and make a pilgrimage to see him; but 
when we get there, instead of the embodied truths and beau- 
1 ties, the walking melody and the breathing poem, which his 
works had led us to expect, we find a man, sometimes cross 
and sometimes crotchety, sometimes tired, or cold, or hun- 
gry, and we go away disappointed, and think we had better 
staid at home; and so we had. For such meetings are not 
meetings, but separations, as half of what men call sociability 
is. When you meet a man on the plane of his thought ; 
when you see what he longs for and aims at, and strives and 
prays to realize ; when you have felt the glow of his inspi- 
ration, and the power of his best mood, then you have met 
him. His inner being has clasped hands with yours in up- 
ward flight ; soul with soul has exchanged look and answer ; 
spirit has recognized spirit, and there can be no hope of such 
another reunion on the plane of common intercourse. I 
never hunt lions, but always avoid them. If destiny brings 
us together, I am glad ; but seldom satisfied. For I have 
met them before in a so much sweeter and holier way, that 
the shaking of hands and inquiring for health seems outra- 
geous. That friendship is best and purest which rests upon 
the hidden rock of a mutual trust, which does not crave re- 
cognition, nor gift, nor token between souls which, having 
once seen and known each the other, know that nothing 
can disturb and separate them. 



I36 SERMONS. 

So long as Jesus lived, there was but a partial friendship 
between him and his disciples. He spoke of fact, and law, 
and reality, but they thought he meant show, phenomena, 
or immediate fruition. And the difference between them 
was so great that he could say pitifully, " Have I been so 
long a time with you, and yet hast thou not known me ?" 
They asked to sit at his right hand or his left in a new 
kingdom ; he said he had no such gifts to bestow. It was 
in this mood that he said, " The Spirit of truth will never 
come unto you until I leave you." Have you never felt 
that same conviction ? Have you not felt conscious of a 
life, a love, an aspiration which you could not express, and 
which your attainments gave so poor a hint of that you 
almost longed to die, in the hope that this inner life might 
then rise in its beauty upon those we love ? Jesus was 
certainly right in his conviction of what was best for his 
friends. For when he was buried from their sight, the Spi- 
rit of truth brought all things to their remembrance which 
he had said unto them. And then they first saw and knew 
him. And the further we pass from the days in which he 
lived, the more dim and obscure the mere accidents of his 
life are made by the mists of time, the more clearly do we 
distinguish the transient from the permanent, and the near- 
er do we draw to the essential beauty of his being. Now 
he is a spirit and the life which assimilates with all that is 
true in the spirit and life of the age. But did you ever try 
to imagine what would be the effect if he were alive now in 
the body. How many of those who say so much and sing 
so much about longing to see Jesus — how many of them 
would recognize him or have any thing to do with him if 
he should come into our streets, and churches, and houses 
as he went into Jerusalem ? If he were sitting in Trinity 



KNOWLEDGE THROUGH LOSS AND SEPARATION. 1 37 

church, and a colored man should ask for a seat in the pew, 
do you think he would refuse him ? And if he did not re- 
fuse him, do you think he would be allowed to sit in Trini- 
ty church next Sunday ? Or imagine how seldom you 
would find him where show and fashion are, and how often 
at the ragged school, or with the newsboys, or the prisoner, 
or abandoned women, trying to help, and bless, and reform 
them. Think how obviously the slave is included in his 
idea of the neighbor, as illustrated in the parable of the 
good Samaritan ; and how severely he would have rebuked 
such a terrible sin as slavery in church and state. Would 
he be any more popular than when he was before in the 
flesh ? There is no soul-friendship between such and Jesus. 
Those who have not tasted the wine of his life, nor heard 
the tramp of his truth in the best spirit of this age, know 
only Christ in the flesh ; while he who has felt most deep- 
ly the age's sorrows and aspirations, who has watched on 
the lone mountain for streaks of morning, who has drunk 
most deeply from the cup of love, and eaten most of the 
bread of vigorous life, he has known Christ the Spirit. 
To him the Spirit of truth has come, and it will guide him 
unto all truth. 

Now, these thoughts ought to give us a little comfort 
concerning much of the discipline of life ; for the Spirit of 
truth is also the comforter. Providence unsheaths the in- 
ner meaning of our being by laying off the concentric rings 
of familiarity which hide it from our sight. Sometimes it 
is done gently by the untwining of time. The childhood 
whose wealth we did not half see as children, rays out its 
full light to our maturer eyes. As we go away from it, we 
get nearer to it, until old age returns and renews it. And 
as each present becomes past, we no longer see it through 



138 SERMONS. 

a glass darkly, but face to face. The children who grew 
around our home-lives until we hardly knew a separate 
life from theirs, gradually separate into so many separate 
groups, and become the centres of a new social life. And 
as they stand off in the pleasant distances of their new rela- 
tions, they assume a new worth in parents' eyes, and much 
is seen and lived over which was missed when passing. 
And the same is true of each privilege which, in the hurry 
and anxiety, and sometimes in the sickness and pain, of its 
enjoyment, was but half appreciated or understood. Time 
carries them on, gives them new grouping and perspective, 
and then we first perceive their beauty. 

But seldom is any soul disciplined so gently. The rule 
is, that sorrow or sickness or death does for us at once what 
perhaps time might have done. We incrust our lives with 
an indifference which utterly hides their real worth, and 
then trial comes to break through the shell and release the 
spirit, and show us wonderful things out of the old love. 
The business-man has been blessed with success until he 
can not realize what its worth is. He accepts it as he 
breathes air and drinks water. There comes a time when 
God seems to say, " It is expedient for you that it go away ; 
for if it go not away, the Spirit of truth will not come." A 
crisis crashes through all his fair hopes, and the truth comes 
to him. A wiser and more grateful man, he begins again, 
with a new appreciation of what before was stale matter of 
fact. And how often do we learn to love children by losing 
children ! How often do we learn the real worth of the 
child when it has become an angel ! Out of the deserted 
places and through the silences comes the better part which 
flesh and blood had hidden from us. Fathers and mothers 
may safely look to the time when they are no more with 



KNOWLEDGE THROUGH LOSS AND SEPARATION. 1 39 

their children, for a love and appreciation which they did 
not get while alive. A mother's love gets to be so like 
breath, so like the milk that nursed us, comes so surely like 
sunrise, and work so steadily like God, that we can not rea- 
lize its height and depth until we see it at a little distance ; 
until it is removed far enough from our bosoms to be mea- 
sured by all other love ; and then the Spirit of truth and the 
Comforter comes, and we meet our mothers. 

And do you doubt that we shall love our country as we 
have never loved her before, since we have been held over 
the abyss of anarchy, and compelled to think what it would 
be to have no country, or a dishonored one. The blood 
of patriotism was almost dried up in hearts petrified by pros- 
perity. We were not aware how much we loved our fa- 
ther-land until it was threatened with disaster ; and then we 
sprang with open arms, as a mother springs from her sleep 
to catch her falling child. 

Much that we call the painful separations of life are really 
the spirit meetings. And much that seems like taking 
away our treasures is but the unearthing of them, or strik- 
ing off the quartz that imbeds the gold. A young prince 
sent an iron egg to a lady to whom he was betrothed. She 
received it in her hand, and looked at it with disdain. In 
her indignation that he should send her such a gift, she cast 
it to the earth. When it touched the ground, a spring, cun- 
ningly hidden in the egg, opened, and another egg, this 
time of silver, rolled out. She touched a secret spring in 
this, and a golden yolk was revealed ; she touched a spring 
in the yolk, and a crown was found within ; she touched a 
spring in the crown, and within it was a diamond marriage- 
ring. 

How often we throw down the gift of daily blessings in 



14-0 SERMONS. 

despair, or how often does death dash them to the earth ; 
and while we weep for them as lost, lo ! a bright silver 
meaning, of which we had not dreamed, rolls out of the 
iron shell. And in these again we touch more subtle 
springs, and behold, a golden spirit flies forth from the 
inner mystery, and out of this again the marriage-ring, in 
token of our union with God. 

In a certain city, a day was fixed to elevate the statue of 
its patron saint to its lofty pedestal. Great care had they 
taken to give the work to the best artist, and select for it 
the most commanding position. The day arrived, and with 
it the statue. All eyes were eager to see it ; but when it 
was uncovered, instead of the image of their saint, they 
saw only a huge, unsightly mass of stone. It had neither 
form nor comeliness. The rage of the people was great, 
and threatened to destroy the artist. But, urged by his 
entreaties, they began to elevate the statue. And as it 
ascended unto the heavens, it began to assume grace and 
beauty. And when it reached its resting-place, behold, it 
stood forth in awful grandeur, as it had been a living god, 
descended from Olympus. 

And so does life, while near at hand, appear large and 
uncomely. We can not take it in at a glance. We can not 
hold it far enough from our fevered hearts to see its divine 
proportions, so sorely does it press upon us ; and sometimes 
great is our disappointment, and we murmur against the 
great Artist. But when the image ascends to its resting- 
place, all its rough angles are rounded, its hard lines soft- 
ened, its proportions harmonized ; and we see, as we could 
not before, that this rude mass contained the image of the 
heavenly, the guardian spirit, the patron saint, the all-watch- 
ful and beautiful God. 



III. 

THE THOUGHT OF THE HEART. 

" For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he." — Prov. 23 : 7. 

This text, in its connections, is used as a caution to one 
who would judge of the real feelings of a host merely by 
his proffers of hospitality. It warns such a one not to be 
deceived by any outward appearance of cordiality ; for he 
will find that his host is not necessarily such as he promises 
with his lips, but such as he is in his heart. " Eat not the 
bread of him who has an evil eye, nor long for his dainties; 
for as he thinks in his heart, so is he. Eat and drink, he 
saith to thee ; but his heart is not with thee." The text 
might be used with excellent effect to enforce the duty of 
perfect truthfulness and sincerity in social relations; to 
show the folly of surrounding ourselves with those who 
expect one thing while we mean another, the impossibility 
of concealing what we really are in our hearts by any ex- 
pressions of unreal cordiality or unfelt interest. It is much 
to be regretted that society is so seldom allowed to group 
itself by the natural laws of spiritual affinity, and is so often 
forced aside from its natural tendencies by artificial attrac- 
tion or repulsion. 

Owing to a multitude of little falsities, almost every man 
finds himself in false relations, from which he can hardly 
'extricate himself at any given time without dissimulation or 
unkindness. But there is nothing to be feared from rela- 



142 SERMONS. 

tions formed upon the basis of reality and sincerity. If we 
seek only those to whom we mean to speak and act as we 
are in our heart of hearts, and if, by being always true to 
ourselves, we draw around us only such as value us for 
what we are, and nothing else, there might be truth between 
man and man. But because we are always exhibiting dain- 
ties of manner, and look, and speech, and saying to all, 
"Eat and drink," when it may be that we inwardly loathe 
the dainties, and wonder that any are attracted by them ; 
because of this we are untrue to ourselves, and we disap- 
point others. We are just what we are at heart, and we 
shall fail sooner or later in every thing which depends upon 
any thing else in us. It is never hard to give of ourselves ; 
our personal influence, our genius, that goes out from us as 
light from the sun, and hence we shall always be true to and 
never disappoint those who meet us on that plane of expec- 
tation; but alas for one who must always create some 
dainty foreign to his tastes, to satisfy the craving of foreign 
natures ! Truthfulness becomes very difficult to such per- 
sons. It throws virtue into the market at a price almost too 
high for human nature to pay. How much better that we 
should be clothed with social relations which will admit of 
the largest and freest movement, and which will enable us to 
surprise by unpromised resources rather than disappoint by 
promised supplies, which we can furnish only by promise. 
But good as are these suggestions of this text upon the duty 
of complete honesty in social intercourse, it is for a widely 
different purpose that I have selected it. I use it now as 
the illustration of a spirit-law of action and reaction be- 
tween the thought of the heart or the reality of character 
and its environment of circumstances and opportunity. We 
are what we think in our hearts, as we are what we most 



THE THOUGHT OF THE HEART. 1 43 

profoundly love. Herein lies our hope and our security — 
that we are not transformed into all the eccentricities of the 
intellect, that we are not limited in our growth to its limita- 
tions ; but we grow into, we literally become, the thought 
of the heart. The heart absorbs something for its nutrition 
out of all that occupies the mind, and even from the nig- 
gard hands of falsehood wrings its needful food of truth. 

A thought may occupy the intellect, and yet not be taken 
into the heart, conscience, will, so as to essentially affect 
the life. This seems at first a pure misfortune, but it is not 
always so; it is the heart's security against false teachers. 
Alas for us, if it were not possible for the mind to assent 
to one thing while the heart believes another and better ! 
Only a small part of the food taken into the stomach is 
nutritious, or adds any thing to support existence. It is 
only a subtler secretion which finds that of which blood is 
made and the fire of life kept burning ; yet the innutritious 
is as essential to health, and to life even, as the nutritious 
food. Xo person could live for a week if fed upon purely 
nutrient food. There is much such a process going on be- 
tween the moral and intellectual life. But a small amount 
of that which we take into the mind is absorbed into the 
circulation of affection to become a part of life. We think 
a great many things ; the heart finds and needs but few, 
but these few it will have. And it would be difficult to 
show that the innutritious thought was not as essential to 
life in the end as the nutritious. It is doubtful if, at present, 
we could exist upon pure, absolute truth; for ;; no man can 
look on God and live." And yet we must ever strive after 
this same impossible thing ; for only in seeking the absolute 
truth are we able to find the true. When we look back upon 
the history of our own minds, we are tempted to smile at the 



144 SERMONS. 

changes through which we have passed, the nothings which 
at various times have occupied the field of our mental 
vision as if they were all. We think in astonishment of the 
earnestness with which we have clung to one and another 
theory, as if our own and society's existence depended upon 
it. We need not smile; we need not wonder; much less 
need we be ashamed or discouraged. In every earnest 
grasp of the mind upon what seemed to it true and perma- 
nent, the heart found what it longed for. We did not be- 
come like that transient error for which we were battling ; 
we became more and more like the thought of the heart, 
which was of pure truth and which loved the error not for 
its sake, but supposing it to be true. It was for that we 
aspired and prayed ; and even though from this time we see 
clearly that we then saw through a glass darkly, the heart 
drew nutrition of immortal life from that partial attainment. 
Do you think that Paul was really the worse for having be- 
lieved in his heart that he verily ought to do many things 
contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth ? Was he not 
the better Christian for having been so good a Jew ? In 
that perfect devotion to what he thought was right and true, 
was he not becoming more and more like perfect Tightness 
and truth ? I think so. Indeed, when we think in what 
error (as later times have proved it) so many good and true 
men have lived and died, and accomplished a noble life- 
work, we must see that an earnest heart finds communion 
with the Infinite, even when the intellect mistakes some 
Gorgon dogma for absolute truth — mistakes the ugly and 
ill-shapen door of the sheepfold for the great pasture where 
the soul finds springing grass and living water. 

Surely, Fenelon, sweet and beautiful Fenelon, drew the 
sources of his life from something better and purer than the 



THE THOUGHT OF THE HEART. 145 

Catholic dogma of the seventeenth century. He does not 
seem to us like his mind ; we always think of him as being 
like the thought of his heart, which, as a light from some 
inner glory, struck through all obscurity and partiality of his 
thought. We think of John Tauler, not as the thinker of 
this or that theory, the advocate of one or another monkish 
discipline ; he seems to us to belong to no church nor order, 
a partisan of no special theory, but the pure, mystic soul, 
bathed in the light of other suns than those which lit the 
outer eye of his dark age. 

The same is true of all saintly men and women of the 
past or present. They were and are in reality, not like their 
doctrines of election, and retribution, and atonement, but 
like the better thing which they loved, namely, leconcilia- 
tion with God and a life in harmony with the Infinite life. 
A bee will suck honey even from dead and decaying vege- 
tation : still, that is no reason why it should leave the full- 
blown clover-field or garden of roses, where fresh honey 
hangs in flower-cups, to prowl for the mite still left in 
garbage. Xor does it follow, because living hearts have 
absorbed some drops of pure love from the large mass of 
dogmas in which the mind of the past has struggled for 
light, that we should turn away from the fountain of truth 
opened to-day in every true soul as fresh as the honey of 
new-blown roses, to find the mites of truth left here and 
there in the rubbish of the past. The relation of dogma to 
the life is the question of more or less nutrition. The less 
nutriment there is in dogmas, the more must the heart have, 
and vice versa; but the souls of men have always been fed 
by the same food — communion with the Infinite — and have 
become like that which they loved and sought for, however 
it may have been named. 
10 



146 SERMONS. 

A sincere man, who says he worships Christ, worships in 
reality his highest thought of the good and the true ; and we 
do the same, but we call the object of our worship God. 
Therefore it is that such men are often surprised by the 
charges which theological opponents make concerning the 
effects of their creed. They are conscious of no such effects. 
They are not looking at the creed, but through it at the deep 
sky. George Herbert says, 

" A man who looks on glass, 
On it may stay his eye ; 
Or, if he chooses, through it pass, 
And so the heavens espy." 

Some dogmas are more transparent than others, as some 
kinds of glass are clearer than other kinds, and the mind is 
ever striving for the clearest dogma ; but it is obvious that 
in any case it is not the dogma itself which the heart loves, 
though it may think so, as a child thinks the landscape is 
actually painted on the window-pane. It is that to which 
the dogma opens the way which the heart loves, and it be- 
comes like that in proportion as it is true and earnest. So, 
friends, we need not despair of possessing the kingdom of 
heaven because we pass through so many changes in 
thought and speculation ; we need not despair of others 
because they differ so widely from us in the form of their 
creed. If we, seek the highest and the best, and strive for 
these, we shall become like them. 

The longing to be so helps to make the soul immortal. 
Now, when the heart-love is fixed and crystallized in habit, 
when the inmost character is determined in prevailing affec- 
tions, thoughts, deeds, then there begins at once a law of 
action and reaction between this reality that we are and its 



THE THOUGHT OF THE HEART. 1 47 

environments — a law of attraction and repulsion, which 
almost compels us to become like that thought of our 
hearts. First it moulds the body to an expression of itself, 
until one begins to look, speak, act like his inmost love. 
The eye, the lip, the nose, the forehead, even the step and 
unconscious manner, are all under its subtle control. It 
strikes through all possible affectations of artificial manners, 
and will out — this central nobility, or the lack of it. When 
the love of the heart is true and pure, no ugliness of feature 
or form can conceal its beauty ; but we straightway think 
that even deformity is handsome if it is illuminated by a 
bright and handsome spirit. I have some faith in Sweden- 
borg's idea that spirits in another world may be known at 
once by their appearance ; that the spiritual body, being so 
much more plastic, and yielding so much more easily to the 
formative power of the spirit, will exactly express the nature 
of the spirit; thus we may know and be known by the 
spiritual body, as we know the quality of a tree by its out- 
ward form. However this may be, the tendency of this 
body to become like the thought of the heart is obvious to 
every careful observer. 

Nature and destiny are honest, and never fail to leave 
their mark — to hang out a sign for vice and virtue, and for 
every quality. Men spend money indefinitely to cover over 
a few inches of baldness, and heed not that nature has pub- 
lished some unworthy love of the heart in black and white 
on the whole body ; but it is all in vain. Nobility and de- 
formity are not wholly matters of the books, to be learned 
by rote in the Guide to Good Behavior; they are of the 
heart, and will declare themselves. It is sad to see one with 
an inward love which ^s unworthy of him trying to hide it 
from his children or his friends. It is sad also to see one 



148 SERMONS. 

who is conscious of true nobility repining because it gets no 
expression in a handsome or noble form and manner ; nei- 
ther need doubt for a moment that both will certainly be 
published. Men said of Burke, " We can not stand under 
the same archway with him in a shower of rain without find- 
ing him out." 

"All things carry the heart's messages, 

And know it not, nor doth the heart well know ; 

But nature hath her will — even as the bees, 
Blithe go-betweens, fly singing to and fro 

With the fruit-bearing pollen." 

Not only is it true that as we think in our hearts, so are 
we ; but it is also true that as we think in our hearts, so is it 
with us. The moment we declare permanently in favor of 
this or that quality, that moment do others come around us 
and demand it, and hold us responsible for it. From the 
lowest to the highest quality of character does this hold 
true. Has a man chosen coarseness ? His choice seems 
at once to embody itself in his companions, who become a 
fate and fury to him. They meet him on that plane ; they 
expect it of him ; he knows they do, and gives it, until at 
last he believes others as coarse as himself, and the world 
presents its coarsest features to him. I once knew a man 
who was famous for his profanity. At first it was only a pas- 
sionate outburst, for which he was hardly responsible. But 
soon he drew around him those who laughed at his pro- 
fanity, and were disappointed if they did not hear it ; he 
yielded, and thus by a natural reciprocal action of this law, 
he soon became unbearable to sensitive minds, and was left 
in his own hell. I knew a young woman who, in the joy- 
ousness of healthy life, won the reputation of being gay and 
frivolous. It really was not the most essential part of her 



THE THOUGHT OF THE HEART. 1 49 

character, although it seemed so; but she drew around her 
those who expected her to be gay and frivolous, and never 
any thing else. Persons who were sensible at other times 
were silly with her, because they took her to be such in her 
heart, until it seemed as if the poor girl was doomed to be- 
come like this environment of frivolity. A stern discipline of 
sorrow saved her by setting free a better and truer thought 
of her heart. How many a man becomes permanently 
fixed in habits of indulgence in the same way ! Before he 
is aware of it, his indulgence, at first casual, gets organized 
into a fate of good fellows who almost force him to his ruin. 
Oh ! how dreadful is this inevitable tendency of the sinner 
to become like his heart-thoughts. Ask yourself, before 
you cherish a thought or an aspiration, Am I willing to be- 
come like this purpose — am I willing to have it published 
in my eye, my voice, my speech, and all I do or say ? Am 
I willing to see it living all about me in the persons of those 
who seek it of me and compel me to give it ? There is 
something startling in the ease and certainty with which a 
man is given over to the hardness and blindness of his own 
heart, and allowed to believe a lie. Paul described this 
effect in Thessalonians when he said, " Because they re- 
ceived not the love of the truth, God shall send them 
strong delusion, that they should believe a lie, that they 
might be damned who believed not the truth." 

The worst effect of having any thing to do with untruth, 
even of trifling with it for policy's sake, is that before we 
are aware we get to believe it. How steadily have the 
South, for party purposes, passed from apology for slavery 
to a belief in and love of it ? Therein is their torment ; that 
is the worst possible thing which could happen to them. 
And yet men say because they are sincere they must be 



150 SERMONS. 

right. When the madness of men passes into sincerity, 
there is nothing left the gods but to destroy them. That is 
the most fearful consequence of an unholy love, that we are 
transformed into it. 

This man is resolved to find faults in his neighbor. He 
will find what he seeks ; we all do. He will note and re- 
member only his faults, which for a time are balanced by a 
certain amount of good which he believes his neighbor 
possesses ; but by and by he gets to believe in the faults 
only, and then he can see no good ; then every man who 
knows any evil of the neighbor will add it to his stock of 
evidence, and at last he is completely given over to believe 
a lie. Or one thinks meanly of mankind ; he notes evi- 
dence of human folly ; others will fill his ears and eyes with 
the same facts and illustrations, and at last he believes 
meanly of man, and in his own person adds another illus- 
tration of it. 

And then, advancing but a step further, the same law 
which makes the body, and the society, and the circumstan- 
ces of a man like his heart-thought, will give its own hue to 
all the fair creation, and all things are repetitions of this 
inner madness. 

But now see how beautiful is the help of this law to one 
who loves God and truth, and who strives to fix the heart 
upon holiness. The body becomes beautiful by that love. 
It shows itself in all that pertains to the personal life. The 
eye, the voice, the lips, the emotions, all have something 
about them which seems to say the inner life is holy. Un- 
derneath all external gayety or frivolity you see the same 
clear light ; omissions of duty or occasional transgressions 
are at once repudiated by the nobler meaning of the whole 
body, and you feel that the heart is essentially true to a 



THE THOUGHT OF THE HEART. 151 

lofty purpose. No deformity or lack of culture can conceal 
the essential sweetness and charm of the spirit. Then how 
quickly this love of the heart becomes woven into a beau- 
tiful fortune of environments. 

Those who have a like love will find out such a one, 
and come to him and expect him to show his fairest side, 
and be disappoinied if he does not. Some one said to 
Emerson, " When you enter the room, I straightway think 
how I shall make humanity appear beautiful to you." How 
can such help but think nobly of man ? All that is hope- 
ful even in sinful souls comes out to sun itself in their pre- 
sence. Fair hopes and good resolves and brighter aspira- 
tions start up at their approach as flowers in the footsteps 
of Spring. If I heard of a marked instance of real worth 
under a rough garb of external manners and uncouth ways, 
I would take pains to tell it to Freeman Clarke, because I 
know he loves to hope noble things of rough and even of 
wicked men. Hundreds would do the same. Thus all 
things become tributary to this grand love of the heart. It 
gets embodied in the lives of others, and it becomes a hea- 
venly atmosphere in which heavenly things are luminous, 
and attract the eye and encourage the heart. I was once 
reading the story of the transfiguration to a dying girl ; she 
said in a bright, penetrating way, "How strange ! The dis- 
ciples must have dreamed it; for it says they were asleep !" 
I wrote at once to Dr. Furness, and gave him an account 
of it, because I knew that such was his theory, and thought 
that this would confirm his own intuition. And so it 
proved. Starr King loved, passionately loved, the White 
Hills. I heard his friends propose to send them on canvas 
to him in his distant /home — a gift of friendship and a tri- 
bute also to a true lover of God ; so that this joy of his 



152 SERMONS. 

heart might also become a part of the outward symbols of 
this inner blessedness, and keep it ever alive. I name 
these instances only to show how sure is the working of this 
law, by which a man becomes more and more like the 
thought of his heart. 

And how earnestly does every view of the case plead with 
us to love the highest and best — God with all our hearts, 
and our neighbor as ourselves. How small do other suc- 
cesses appear beside this of a pure heart which sees God ? 
How easily we may see all else fade and die if we have 
found that wonderful charm which calls into being an envi- 
ronment of pure, loving, hopeful souls, and makes heaven 
wherever it goes. If there is any beauty in life, such will 
find it. If there is any goodness, such will meet it. If there 
is any truth, such will possess it. They may pass through 
many changes ; what seems to them rock to-day may prove 
sand to-morrow; but they will grow through all changes 
into nearer likeness to that which they seek. 

O friends ! choose ye this day, I entreat you, that thought 
of the heart into which you are willing to grow ; which you 
would wear on your foreheads ; which you would write in 
your friendships ; which you would hope and believe of 
man ; which you would exalt to the infinite and call your 
Father in heaven ; yea, which you would see rise into a 
mansion not built with hands, eternal in the heavens, the 
everlasting home of your souls. 



IV. 
THE PROMISES OF GOD. 

" It was impossible for God to lie." — Heb. 6 : 18. 

This text fixes a limit to the activities of God. The 
schoolmen said that the Deity could do all things. This 
man says that there is at least one thing that even he can 
not do — he can not lie. It means simply that God can not 
be and not be at the same time. An infinite being who 
could lie would not be God; for lying implies contradiction, 
and that implies finiteness. This text is important, because 
it is a bold judgment of a finite being passed upon an infi- 
nite being. Think how bold it was. Think what is im- 
plied in such a judgment. How could this man know 
what God can not do ? He had not considered the infinite 
attributes ; he did not know from personal experiment what 
the divine being is capable of; he had not entered into the 
treasury of his thought, nor measured all his ways. He 
had no system of empiricism which piled fact upon fact 
until he could climb upon it to the height of the possibilities 
of God. How then could he pronounce this universal 
negative and fix this positive limit to infinite power ? 

He had just one standard of judgment, and that belonged 
to him as a man, and not as the writer of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews : it was the witness of God in every heart; 
the conviction born in men that God is all perfection, and 



154 SERMONS. 

that perfection is consistent with itself; that all diversity 
resulting from this consistency has its unity, all discord its 
harmony, all falsehood its truth, and all wrong its right. 
This Hebrew writer, looking out upon the creation through 
windows which the Creator had opened in his soul, saw 
that the true object of this inner religious want could not 
lie; he knew that the best hopes of pure souls must in 
some deep way run side by side with the whole plan of 
creation. 

Many things are implied in this judgment which have 
important bearings upon our life-problem. It implies, first 
of all, the capacity in man to judge not only of Bible, and 
creed, and church, and ritual, but of God. It implies a 
capacity of submitting all things to the test of this inner 
witness. It warrants us in saying that the book, the creed, 
the church, the form that attributes to God what is contra- 
dictory, discordant, untrue to the human ideal, is a lie. 

It implies, further, that the inner life is the great reality, 
and by it the reality of all other things must be tested ; that 
nothing can be so certain to a man as his inner life of emo- 
tion, thought, resolution, intuition. That which is external 
to himself becomes reality to him only as it harmonizes 
with that which is internal. It is not matter which gives 
reality to spirit, not the material object which verifies the 
spiritual subject, but the spirit — or the life of man — goes 
on affirming forever that the laws which are stamped on 
the soul are laws which exist everywhere, and if any thing 
exists by other laws than these, it can not be known by man. 
The inner craving is the only door which opens outward 
upon the object of its hunger. 

It is true that man is weak and feeble, yet in all his 
weakness he will affirm that what is not beautiful to him is 



THE PROMISES OF GOD. 1 55 

not beautiful in God ; what is not true to him is not true 
with God ; what is not right to him is not right in God. 
He may, indeed, admit the existence and reality of a truth, 
a beauty, and a right which transcend his present capacity 
as far as the east is from the west; but he will not admit 
that truth in its highest significance, nor right in its largest 
relations, nor beauty in its most splendid manifestations, can 
contradict even his limited ideas of truth, right, and beauty. 
We may readily believe in a mathematical result which 
transcends our present power of testing ; but when you 
tell the human soul of a God whom it can not comprehend 
because his love is greater even than that of earthly parents 
for their children; whose mercy sendeth sun and rain upon 
the good and the bad ; whose discipline prepares, through 
trial and tears, things which eye hath not seen, nor the 
heart of man conceived ; when you say this to the soul, it 
receives it with faith and joy, even though it can not com- 
prehend it. It seems reasonable. It seems but an exten- 
sion of those ways of God which he can trace in his own 
heart, mind, conscience, soul. It seems consistent with 
that perfectness which he longs, aspires, and prays for. It 
seems the completion of the circle of whose majestic sweep 
his own being marks a few degrees. 

But when you tell any one who is not made dumb by 
superstition, of a being whose greatness is not seen in the 
completion of, but in the opposition to, our nature ; whose 
ways are not our ways, because they cont?-adict our life ; who 
loves us more than earthly parents love their children by 
doing for us what every earthly parent would deem it cruel 
to do for a child ; whose discipline is so mysterious that, in- 
stead of making generations bend and break that it may 
draw all souls unto itself, it tears and dismembers them that 



156 SERMONS. 

it may forever torment the wicked ; when you tell such a 
soul of such a God, it must answer as this fearless Hebrew 
did — God can not lie. 

In times like these, one loves to get near some such cer- 
tainty as this. One loves to penetrate as closely as possi- 
ble to the essential unity through all the surface-strata of 
diversity. When the air is so thick with falsehood ; when 
men rise to responsibility by lying, and the whole discipline 
of the hour seems to contradict the hope of the age, we 
love to hear that He who controls the hour and the age, the 
soul and its discipline, can not fail in the least nor in the 
greatest. We feel the need of finding a focus where these 
discordant tones make harmony ; we seek some perspec- 
tive extensive enough to group the straggling figures in this 
battle-scene as they must be pictured to the eye of God. 
There must be some issue to the blood, and sweat, and groan, 
and heart-breaking of this time, so great, so eternal, that 
this is not worthy to be compared with that, else God could 
not be happy. Do you ever think of this — how much 
nearer the sorrows and aspirations of the age are to his 
heart than to ours ? To us it seems dreadful that there 
should be such a cruel war in such a fair land, that there 
should be so much success of wicked and bad men, so 
much misery and suffering in a world so capable of being 
all that the soul craves for an earth-home. But there can 
not be a dark side, not a possible depression of hope, which 
has not been already seen and thought of by infinite love 
and justice and care. These things which are now trans- 
piring have not been sprung upon the Creator unawares, or 
in spite of his will. This present disorder is not a mere 
dance of death in a world which God has vacated — chaos 
come back again to reclaim a work whose creator, when he 



THE PROMISES OF GOD. 157 

saw it, pronounced it very good. Let us not forget, in any 
season of despondency, how impossible it is God's works 
should fail — that the promise of peace on earth and good- 
will among men should not be sooner or later fulfilled. Let 
us not forget that the same Being who made the soul's sor- 
row and aspiration controls its discipline and its destiny. 
Let us not forget that He who gave us fathers and mothers 
and the love of home and family, and the love of beauty 
and order ; the same Being who made the earth to yield her 
increase, and hung the heavens over it, and filled them with 
stars ; who made sunrise and sunset, clouds and flowers, 
and every sweet harmonious thing, rules at this hour as he 
did at the first and will at the last; and he can not lie. He 
can not contradict the witness of himself which he put into 
our hearts -to testify of him. O friends ! I love to look up 
out of this hot trial, this scalding heat of war, into the pure 
spaces of God's fidelity, and feel the cool tranquillity of his 
consistency with himself and us. Here is comfort. Our 
feeble lives, how small they are in this great frame of things ! 
I love to feel that they are links in a chain which can not 
be broken ; that they are not separate grains in a chance- 
rope of sand, but separate sinews in the everlasting arms 
which encircle all events. For, feeble as our lives are, how 
magnificent are their aspirations, and how far-reaching their 
sympathies ! My friend, why are you heart-broken at the 
rage of wicked men ? Why do you feel that you would 
rather die than outlive the glory and the honor of your 
country ? Why need it disturb your sleep, or abate your 
, enjoyment, or dull your appetite, because a great, free, hap- 
py people seem ready to enter into a league against the 
poor, the friendless, down-trodden slave ? Why do you 
feel ashamed and blush to call yourself a man when you 



158 SERMONS. 

see what corrupt and wicked men are doing to destroy our 
country, as if all sense of shame or desire of goodness had 
died out of them ? Or why do you go still further than 
this in your sympathies ? Why do you shudder at the 
downfall of Poland, the oppression of Hungary, the suffer- 
ings of Ireland, the cruelty of England? These things 
may never affect you personally. You may put your arms 
about your loved ones and hold them back from the peril 
of w r ar. You may shut your heart to the cry of your coun- 
try, the appeal of the widow and fatherless, the groan of 
the wounded and dying. You may scorn the slave, you 
may strike hands with his oppressor, you may consent to 
have his wife stolen, his children sold and his heart broken. 
You need not die over and over again with every triumph 
of the power of darkness. You may retire to a security of 
indifference, where you trade and get rich, and eat and sleep 
and die like a dog if you will. Then why this sighing and 
praying and weeping and struggling for something better — 
for a free country, for an enfranchised people, for a nation 
of men capable of heroism, self-control, and self-forgetful- 
ness ? Why have you still before you that vision which 
has proved a will-o'-the-wisp to so many martyrs and patriots 
and prophets of all ages ? Why will you feed a fire whose 
burning consumes your own soul while it sheds light and 
warmth upon others ? 

It is because you know that God can not lie. The very 
idea that he can do so, even in the remotest parts of the 
world, seems an insult to the God in you, and you are 
roused in spite of yourself to protest against it. He has 
written a great promise on our hearts, and we can not help 
seeking its fulfillment everywhere. Our only chance of inhe- 
riting manhood and immortality depends upon our fidelity to 



THE PROMISES OF GOD. 1 59 

the truth of God of which our soul is a witness. Give up 
this struggle, and we become brutes. Exchange its sweat, 
and tears, and sighs, and battle-strokes for ease, comfort, and 
prosperity, and you give your soul in exchange for the world. 
Oh ! there is something sublime in this tearful, tragic 
assertion of the right of a created being to feel that its 
Creator is true, and this protest to the death that all which 
conflicts with this feeling is false; this right of a created 
being to find something outside itself answering to its inner 
life. The old theologies are full of essays to prove that a 
created being has no rights, any more than clay in the hand 
of the potter. To say so is simply monstrous. We had no 
choice of being. We were not asked whether or not we 
would take our chances of ultimate success in such a world 
as this. We were not asked if we were willing our bodies 
should be frozen by its cold or smitten by its heat, starved 
by its famine or pampered by its plenty, afflicted by its 
pains or consumed by its passions. We were not asked if 
we would have our minds darkened by this world's error or 
dazzled by its truth ; our consciences hardened by its sins or 
confounded by its wrongs; our hearts intoxicated by its 
joys or broken by its woes. W T e were never asked if we 
were willing to love our country while we were compelled to 
see her dishonored ; if we were willing to love liberty, and be 
compelled tasee her beacon-lights blown out in every watch- 
tower along the coast of history ; if we were willing to love 
freedom, and yet to see it taken from the black man by the 
rich, and the happy, and the prosperous, the powerful of 
earth. We were not asked if we were willing to have souls 
that would raise us in capacity of joy and sorrow above the 
brutes, and whose life must be fed by spiritual things which 
are so deeply buried beneath passion, and pride, and self- 



l60 SERMONS. 

interest, that nothing but affliction can unearth them for 
us. 

If then, without being asked, all these necessities were 
laid upon us, we must have rights as created beings. We 
have a right to say that God can not lie. We have a right 
to believe that these highest necessities of the purest souls 
shall be satisfied. We have a right to believe that this long- 
ing for peace, and beauty, and righteousness, and justice, is 
not all a dream. We have a right to believe that God 
would not have compelled us to accept of existence unless 
he meant that that existence should prove a blessing to us ; 
unless he meant that there should come a time when each 
created being will bless him for existence, and accept, from 
choice, what he gave without choice. We have a right to 
trust in him that made us, with all these heaven-piercing 
yearnings. He will not mock us. He has not created this 
soul-hunger for the purpose of laughing it to scorn, when it 
cries for something to eat. If we ask for bread, he will 
not give us a stone ; if we ask a fish, he will not give us a 
serpent. And because earthly parents know how to give 
good gifts to their children, we have a right to believe that 
he who made earthly parents will give good things to them 
that ask him. 

But they tell us man is so weak, and wicked, and misera- 
ble, that he does not deserve to be cared for by an Infinite 
Being ! Is that the way we think of perfectness ? Have you 
less or more care for your helpless, deformed child, because 
he is helpless ? When is the tenderest appeal made to your 
most perfect helpfulness — when your baby lies in the cradle 
too weak to lift so much as a hand or an eye to you for as- 
sistance, or that babe when he has grown to be a man, and 
become your peer in all things ? If ye, then, being evil, are 



THE PROMISES OF GOD. l6l 

moved by every holy sentiment to help your child because 
he is helpless, how much more shall God help his feeble 
child whose weakness is embittered by his aspiration after 
that which strength alone can give ! This sense of helpful- 
ness in your nature is God's promise to you that his nature 
is the same, only freed from all inability to help; and God 
can not lie. 

Here then, my friends, we may come back for the answer 
of the old wearying question. This is our comfort and our 
assurance : that these necessities of our souls are God's pro- 
mises to them. They are the bridges which span the chasm 
between ourselves as subjects, and himself as the object. 
They are the windows through which we can look and find 
the ideal prospect for which we hunger. Do not doubt that 
every real necessity of your soul's life will be met by a cor- 
responding helpfulness from God's life. The want may 
indeed be fictitious, and the supply dangerous : you must 
see to that. But those deepest wants, to which all others 
give way; those brightest hopes, before which all others 
grow pale ; that enduring faith, which has lived through all 
ages, and over-reached all stretches of history, that can not 
fail, because God is true. 

O patriot! sad and strong, loving your country, and 
willing to die for her, while you are compelled to see 
the enemies of God and man rise against her; you whose 
heart is on fire with the old hope of freedom and liberty, 
that hope which counts its martyrs by millions, and makes 
their graves the milestones of the world's growth, do not 
forget, even in the darkest hour, when all that you have 
longed for and worked for seems ready to sink, that God 
can not lie. / 

O human heart ! sick of failure, discouraged at your 



102 SERMONS. 

poor attainment, do you ask if there is rest for the weary ? 
If God giveth to his beloved sleep ? Do you ask, " If a 
man die, shall he live again ?" and by what sign you may 
prophesy the fulfillment of the promise ? You may know it 
by this : God made you so that you can not help longing 
for immortality. He has engraved the hope on the soul of 
the world. It has been the one unfading hope which has kept 
the heart of humanity from breaking \ the one compensation 
to which martyrs have looked out of the flame, and heroes 
through the battle-smoke, and saints through the pain of 
life's fitful fever. God has made you to hope for immor- 
tality, and he can not lie. 

O mourner ! the world seems blank and sad to you. 
You have hardly the heart to make new friends, for sorrow 
that the old and tried ones have departed. You hesitate at 
each new step forward because it bears you further from 
some cherished grave. The familiar places are silent, and 
you miss something everywhere. It seems as if the early 
promise had failed, and your life, which once stood fair and 
round in its green foliage of friendships, is now stripped and 
bare as a winter tree sighing for the old summer that shall 
never return, and waiting for the new spring-time whose 
warmth is not yet felt. You say, " Are these old ties sun- 
dered forever? Is it only separation, or is it banishment 
that divides the family on earth from the family in heaven ? 
Will these sundered heart-strings ever be bound together 
again, or must I look forward to a future life, where all 
is new and strange ? Are the relations in which my life 
began — a love of father and mother, husband and wife, 
parent and child — are these the mould in which my type of 
being was cast, and the soil in which it is to grow for- 
ever ?" My friend, your sorrow is the world's sorrow. 



THE PROMISES OF GOD. 1 63 

Your desire is the desire of humanity. The aspiration to 
meet, and know, and live with the loved ones who are gone 
before, is one which breathes out of the deepest heart of the 
race, and speaks from the better nature ; and your hope is 
the old hope, the hope of all. God hath given the promise, 
and it is impossible that God should lie. 



SELECTIONS FROM SERMONS. 



L 

THE WAY OF LIFE. 

The life of Jesus is of priceless value as a result ; both as 
a result of what had gone before, and as the iesultant of a 
new spiritual force in conflict with the resistance of its envi- 
ronment. That such a person as Jesus was possible at that 
time marks a long stretch of progress from the beginning, 
as the appearance of man on the earth marks a long pro- 
gress from the virginal chaos. His life was not a solitary 
event thrust into time from eternity, with no intermediate 
stages of development — as if the fauna or flora of the pre- 
sent earth had been raised by miracle upon the Silurian 
rocks — but it indicates a result of the past, a general warm- 
ing and purifying and hardening of the globe in preparation 
for a higher and better type of life. The great mass of the 
Christian precepts and principles had already been embo- 
died in other writings. 

It is a great mistake to suppose that Christianity swept 
away all that had gone before, and planted in its stead an 
entirely new civilization. Before gospels or epistles had 
been put to paper, the results of the former development 
came from the east and west, the north and south, to 
recognize in this new life a fulfillment of the old hope. 
And the re-birth of art and revival of letters was in each 
case the result of new combinations between the Christian 
philanthropy and faith, and the contemporary heathen cul- 
ture. The church fathers were as much indebted to Plato 



1 68 SELECTIONS. 

and Aristotle for their doctrines as they were to Jesus for 
their triumphant lives. This imputes not the less but the 
more honor to Jesus. For if he was an unnatural being, 
raised up miraculously by the power of God to live and 
teach as he did, it is hard to see how any peculiar merit 
attaches to him. Had God done so for us, we might have 
done likewise. The wonder is, that this obscure man, un- 
taught in the schools, living in an unheroic age, when there 
was every temptation to think meanly of man — that such a 
one should so live, by the purity of his heart and directness 
of his intuitions, as to give the best illustration of the des- 
tiny of man and the best interpretation of all that had pre- 
ceded him, so that in him religions of race became religions 
of the world. This is the wonder and this the glory of 
Jesus. 

And in like manner there is more hope and comfort in 
regarding Christianity as a result of the past, than as an 
abrupt and exceptional incursion of heaven upon the earth. 
It shows that the race has never been orphaned of God, 
but ever helped by him through prophets, teachers, re- 
deemers ; that there is no break in the thread of develop- 
ment ; that the retrograde movements of an age or genera- 
tion are like the backward swings of the pendulum, helpful 
of the ever-moving hand upon the dial. 

Jesus's life was not like the flash of a meteor upon whose 
sudden light we can predicate nothing — no hope of light 
for the traveler nor heat for the grain — but rather like the 
rising of the sun, prophesied by darkness, heralded by twi- 
light, the natural result of the fullness of time. 

His life is priceless as the result of a human soul strug- 
gling with sin, and temptation, and error ; bearing witness 
to the truth even unto death. That he saw so much to love 



THE WAY OF LIFE. 169 

in common people ; that he made common life appear so 
uncommon, even to publicans and sinners \ that in the 
midst of stupidity, and hypocrisy, and treachery, he did not 
become soured and distrustful of man ; that his peace came 
not from blindness, but from clearness of vision ; that he 
could look through the transient event to the permanent 
providence ; that his feeble life was made strong from 
sources so deep and solemn : that, with a woman's capacity 
for suffering, he suffered in agony to the end, still clinging 
to the truth, still loving God and the lilies, still trusting 
in his right and ability to lead the world. He saw, and 
suffered, and accomplished ; and he speaks to you and to 
me in our pain and pleasure, our success and failure, of 
what he has tried and conquered. Such a result is price- 
less ; such a life speaks to all lives ; and belongs not to one 
man, nor one race nor age — it belongs to humanity. 

But, friends, it is not as a result in either sense that the 
life of Jesus is of most value to the world ; its real excel- 
lence is hinted at in the text, where he calls himself the 
Way. He is not the journey's end, but the strait gate and 
the narrow path ; not the living pasture, but the door of the 
sheepfold ; not the end, but the means ; not the argument, 
but the method; not the Infinite and Absolute, but the 
way to the Father. 

This is the crowning glory of Christianity — it is a way and 
not an end. It is a path which you and I may walk in, 
step by step, through forest shade and desert gloom, and 
city tumult, never doubting, even when the end is hidden, 
that all possible good which can' come to us will be met 
sooner or later on that road. I do not say that Jesus began life 
with a conscious plan of revealing the only way by which 
men could find the Father ; but by doing, thinking, feeling, 



170 SELECTIONS. 

what was right as each occasion offered itself, he found at 
last the unvarying condition of all thought, feeling, action, 
which enables us to pass from the transient to the permanent, 
from the fact to the law, from the event to the providence, 
from the day to eternity, from earth to heaven, from the 
neighbor whom we have seen to God whom we have not 
seen. That is the way of life. This is the glory of Christian- 
ity, because the Father comes to us only as we seek him. 
The infinite can not be imported into our natures any more 
than the ocean can be imported into a hollow shell ; but as 
we open our souls, it comes in and fills us to the extent of 
our capacity — no further. And how much capacity we have 
depends upon how far we have traveled in the right way. 
As much as the mind has found of truth, the heart of love, 
the conscience of right, the soul of God, so far have we tra- 
veled in the way, truth, life which lead to the Father. 
Have you struggled up half the mountain-path ? You 
command half the prospect. Have you reached the sum- 
mit ? It is all yours. And since this is the inevitable law 
of human growth; since no man can perform the journey of 
life for us, nor carry us to the Father, nor bring the Father 
to us, how priceless is the life of one who has found the 
right way, of a human brother who has struggled so far up- 
ward that he calls to the nineteenth, as to the first century, 
"Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, and ye shall 
find rest." 

Now this, the preeminently blessed element of Christian- 
ity, is just the element which the church as an organization 
has steadily refused to accept. She has seized upon certain 
words and acts of Jesus, certain historical facts about him, 
and made them ends in themselves. She has not nightly 
pitched her 



THE WAY OF LIFE. 171 

" moving tent 
A day's march nearer home." 

She has not hurried each traveler on after his swift fore- 
runner; but, building her walls around his ancient camping- 
ground of a night, has set her sentinels to proclaim it the 
celestial city, where his and our journey ends. Thus we miss 
that which we most need in Jesus — an open way, a tendency, 
a condition of life. This may be owing in part to the diffi- 
culty of organizing any thing so subtile, so impatient of cor- 
poreal touch, as this wonderful way to the Father. We can 
fence in a field and obtain a title to it, and measure every 
inch of its surface, and say who shall and who shall not 
enter it ; but it is impossible to encompass an endless high- 
way, reaching from the weakness of man to the omnipotence 
of God, and make it the property of a sect. The most we 
can hope is, that we may fix our habitation beside it, that it 
may serve us, though it can not belong to us. That which 
God needs most of genius, (if we may speak of his needs,) 
is that it should prepare a way, open a door, set free a foun- 
tain, through which he may pour out somewhat of his 
truth and beauty upon man; or perhaps, better still, through 
which the soul may go to him and find him in higher truth 
and diviner beauty, through which it may go in and out 
and find pasture. All those who have been schoolmasters to 
the race were far greater blessings as ways than as ends. 
Socrates bequeathed nothing to the world that was compa- 
rable with his method. Of all else we know little. He has 
not learned the a, b, c of art, to whom the picture, the 
statue, the symphony, the cathedral, of the great masters, is 
not a way over which his soul flies quickly into the presence- 
chamber of the infinite beauty. Luther was a way in his 
best days. When he ceased to be a Protestant against the 



172 SELECTIONS. 

wickedness of Rome ; when he gave up the grand old cry, 
"The just shall live by faith," and became a Lutheran, and 
fought for his attainment as the end, the result beyond which 
no man could go, he was shorn of his peculiar strength, and 
ground like Samson in the Philistines' mill. Protestantism 
was a way of life by faith, and involved the right of each 
soul, without priest or church, to go to God in his own way. 
Lutheranism is only a mile-stone showing how far one man 
had traveled on that endless road. Millions have traveled 
on his way, but few have pitched their tents for permanent 
repose in his hostelry. Unitarianism is a way, and not an 
end. Dr. Channing consecrated himself soul and body, not 
to the defense of his results so much as to the assertion of 
the right of each soul to worship God in spirit and in truth 
as it would. And he will live as the representative of a ten- 
dency, the advocate of a method long after he is forgotten 
as a father of Unitarianism. What is the first thought 
which his magic name brings before you even now, at a 
remove of less than a quarter of a century from his day ? 
Is it not of a pure and fearless soul seeking truth in the love 
of God and man, and pushing aside every creed or form 
which comes between him and the object of his search ? The 
defender of a sect is an afterthought. 



II. 

ALL THINGS ARE YOURS. 

How could Paul, that feeble, penniless man, matched 
against a world of prejudice and power — how could he make 
such a triumphant assurance as this to disciples poor and 
friendless as himself? How could he encourage them to 
forsake all and follow the truth on the strength of such an 
assurance ? What was the nature of this possession ? 
What was this claim to man, and wealth, and experience, 
and all time? It was clearly not the claim of property. 
They had no rights of monopoly over the earth and life. 
There were many men in Corinth who could have shown 
a thousand possessions to the Christian's one. Paul had 
learned to regard every thing as his which could serve him, 
and he teaches the Corinthians that the great secret of pos- 
session is to put the soul in such an attitude toward the 
world, and life and death, the present and future, that they 
shall serve it, and that this is the highest and best owner- 
ship. Just as a man who places his ship in the right rela- 
tion toward the winds owns the winds. He could get no 
more nor better service from them if he owned them. The 
best uses of all things abide in that to which our title-deeds 
give us no possession. The mere fact that we can call a 
thing ours by the law of the land, is no proof that it is ours 
by the law of the spirit and of life. Indeed, we may be 
owned by the very things which we possess. I have seen 
persons build a great house and fill it with splendid furni- 



174 SELECTIONS. 

ture and say, " That house is mine ;" when in reality they 
and their whole family were slaves to the house. The 
house owned them. When the carpet said, " Shut the 
blinds, or I will fade," they would shut them and sit in un- 
wholesome darkness. When the chairs said, " Cover us all 
up, or we will catch dust," they would cover them and lose 
all their beauty. And so it was ever. The house owned 
them. The most casual comer, who felt his higher nature 
ministered unto by all the beauty and comfort there, owned 
the house more than the owner. To possess any thing is 
to make that thing of service, and to possess it most truly is 
to make it yield the highest service. The only reason that 
we try to own a thing is that we may control its service, 
and thus better secure it. But the moment we fail to com- 
prehend the true use of that which we own, or fail to secure 
its legitimate service, it ceases to be ours and it begins to 
possess us. A man may own a large library of beautiful 
books from which he is not able to derive any real service. 
He may have bought them to gratify his pride of posses- 
sion ; and he may have a hired servant who reads them in 
the garret after the labors of the day are over, to whom the 
books belong more truly than to the owner. 

Now, this is clearly the true relation of each mind toward 
the world's great teachers. One never knows how to value 
them rightly until he has felt that his own personality is the 
most sacred thing which he possesses or can possess ; and 
that teachers, no matter how great or good, are nothing 
but a mischief the moment they ignore his personality and 
take entire possession of him.. Yet how many persons 
there are who are owned by men ; who have no opinions 
except such as they receive from some favorite Paul, Apol- 
los, or Cephas ; who dress, and study, and plan, and recite 



ALL THINGS ARE YOURS. 1 75 

a creed, not by the law of their own peculiar life, but as 
some one else does. They are like those parasitic plants 
which have no roots of themselves, but fasten to trees which 
have roots. Now, the true use to be made of other peo- 
ple's opinions in church, or state, or society, is the use 
which a living tree makes of the elements. Because the 
tree has life of its own and a destiny of its own, it takes 
from the earth, the air, and the water that which helps its 
life. And, although each of the elements is mighty enough 
to exterminate the tree, yet, because it has life, it practically 
owns them all. There could be no possible advantage in 
the tree's owning the elements, for it gets all from them 
that makes them valuable to it. But when the tree dies, 
the moment it ceases to exercise the power of converting 
all things to its own uses, then all the elements which be- 
fore served it unite to destroy it, until each gets back what 
it gave. So it is with a human soul. So long as a man is 
alive, and assimilates the social elements to his own nature, 
they all serve him, and make him better and stronger, or, 
what is the same thing, they belong to him. The opinions 
of others are his food ; but, like all food, they can not be- 
come a part of his being until he has mastered them. Mo- 
ses, David, Jesus, Paul, are not his masters, bufchis servants. 
So long as he is alive in mind, in heart, in conscience, he 
will assimilate from them elements of his own life, and will 
reject those which he can not assimilate, no matter who else 
can assimilate them. But the moment he becomes indiffer- 
ent and dead in spirit, it will fare with him in the social 
world precisely as it does with the dead tree in the natural 
world ; every social element, every church faction, and 
every state party will attack him and destroy the personal 
life which he had assimilated, and make him a dead tool. 



176 SELECTIONS. 

Because true and entire life is the only condition of growth 
in the universe. It is the only condition of safe existence 
amid its tremendous forces. 

What joy there is in this thought! How it unfetters the 
whole higher being ! With what new interest do we go to 
the opinions of the past and the present the moment we feel 
that, whatever they were or are, they can not be so sacred 
as the great life-thought which they can produce in us. It 
was this life of Jesus, this power of living amid the social 
elements and possessing them, which Paul preached as the 
only essential thing, to which all things else would be duly 
added. 

In like manner, he says, the living soul possesses the 
world — wealth, position, influence, and all things which min- 
ister to physical necessities or comforts. 

There is a literal sense in which this is, in a measure, true. 
The industry, and honesty, and economy of money and 
time which a healthful Christianity inspires, are the best con- 
ditions of worldly success in the long run. It would be 
hard to show, from the experience of this country for the 
last ten years, that unchristian enterprise is more successful 
than Christian enterprise. 

But Paul ]*ad no such thought as this in his mind when 
he told the poor Corinthian Christians that the world was 
theirs. He meant that to every spiritual purpose it belong- 
ed to them. Those who legally own the world can get 
from it nothing which they can carry out of it except men- 
tal, moral, religious discipline and development. What is 
wealth to a man whose mind, heart, conscience, soul, are 
not strengthened by it ? When he dies, he can not carry it 
with him ; he can only carry the amount of soul which it 
has helped him to acquire. When he goes to a world 



ALL THINGS ARE YOURS. 1 77 

where the only realities are spiritual things, his happiness 
will depend not at all upon the amount of money he pos- 
sessed in this world, but upon his power of spiritual discern- 
ment. There he will stand in the presence of beauty : if 
his wealth has helped him to love beauty, then he has truly 
possessed the world. There he will be in the presence of 
truth : if his wealth has helped to love truth, then he has 
truly possessed the world. There he will live in the pre- 
sence of infinite purity: if his earthly possessions have 
made him pure, and taught him to love purity, then his pos- 
sessions have ministered unto him. But can you not ima- 
gine that many a man and woman who has lived in honor- 
able poverty, and loved the beauty of the rich man's fields, 
worshiped in the shadows of his great forests, met God in 
the sunrise which dawns over his broad estates, and in the 
stars which keep their sacred watch every night over the 
rich and the poor, in the joys and sorrows which come to all; 
many a poor man and woman, who have learned purity in 
poverty and schooled themselves to find unenvious joy 
in the prosperity of the rich — can you not imagine that 
such persons may more truly possess the world than those 
who own it ? They certainly do. In every respect it serves 
them. They conquer envy by living beside those who have 
greater abundance than they. Thus the possessions of 
others give them the pearl of great price — a thoroughly un- 
envious spirit. Does the world give its legal possessor 
more ? They learn to live in contentment through faith 
that all is well, although it seems so ill to them. Can 
wealth give its possessor a greater gift ? And when they 
die, they go to a spirit-world with the power of spiritual 
enjoyment, which shows that this world has truly served 
them. But bear in mind, this is not because poverty is in 



178 SELECTIONS. 

itself virtuous or wealth in itself vicious. The poor as sel- 
dom own the world in this spiritual sense as the rich, and 
the temptations and dangers of poverty are ten to one 
greater than those of wealth. There is to both rich and 
poor attached the same condition of possession, stern and 
inflexible as gravitation. That condition is life, true, ear- 
nest, mysterious life— the life which enabled Jesus to say in 
the midst of violence, " My peace I give unto you;" that life 
which enabled Paul to say, " My strength is made perfect in 
weakness." It is possible for any person who has this life, 
this determination to make all things serve him, no matter 
in what soil of fortune he may be planted — it is possible for 
him to take possession of every element of divine provi- 
dence. 

In the same spiritual and beautiful sense do life and 
death belong to a living spirit. By life and death I mean 
the two great classes of experience that these words indicate, 
the one of joy, the other of sorrow. And there is nothing 
which marks a higher stage of development than the fact 
that a man owns his experience; that he will not be mas- 
tered by the excitements of pleasure, the allurements of suc- 
cess, the intoxication of prosperity, nor yet by the discou- 
ragements of loss, the anxieties of adversity, nor the pain 
and anguish of death. If you would know precisely the 
point where gratification lapses into excess, you may mark 
it by this: whenever pleasure makes you lose yourself, 
whenever habit cramps your freedom, whenever you begin 
to lose in the least degree full control of your experiences, 
you may know that innocence is past, and that wickedness 
has begun. There are few things more fearful than for a 
human being to surrender the control of his life-vessel on 
the verge of a Niagara of indulgence. Oh ! beware of this. 



ALL THINGS ARE YOURS. 1 79 

No matter how constant is your success, nor how uniform 
your pleasure, keep your spirit above it ; keep your will be- 
yond its control, keep your eye on the spirit's destiny, and 
compel all pleasure and all success to serve you to that end. 

But this power to control our experience is just as essen- 
tial in adversity. How often do persons give themselves to 
sorrow; and the moment they do so, sorrow can no more 
help them than the rain can revive a withered branch. The 
sole moral object of adversity is to strengthen life; but if we 
surrender our life to adversity, then it will destroy us. Each 
great trial is the riddle of the Sphinx : if we solve it, we de- 
stroy it ; if we do not, it devours us. If I crave one thing 
more than another, it is that sorrow may never master me. 
Yea, I would possess death itself. Whenever it comes, or 
in whatever form it comes, I would look it calmly in the 
face and say, " You are mine." Till the last pulse-beat I 
would watch the ebb of life, and say, " I still live; I am not 
yours — I will not be yours." Nothing is so painful as to see 
a dear friend passing beyond the reach of our help into the 
shadow of death, and yet imploring the help we can not 
give. O friends ! cherish that life which will claim death as 
its own ; which will claim it as a grand experience to which 
it is entitled. And then, wherever you die, or whenever, 
your friends may feel that you have but claimed your own 
bravely, cheerfully, triumphantly. 

And, once more, to such a life belongs all time, and all 
the possibilities of time, whether in things present or in 
things to come. We may well say to ourselves, as we la_ 
ment the want of time and opportunities for more generous 
culture; as we long to know the thoughts of the great and 
good of earth, and to see the treasures of beauty which the 
earth has in store for thdse that love them ; we may well say, 



l8o SELECTIONS. 

" Have patience, O my soul ! Make the things of this pre- 
sent hour — the men, the possessions, the experiences — make 
these yours, and then all things, present and to come, shall 
be yours." The soul, in its best moods, longs to linger 
about these things present, even when it shall live amid the 
things to come until it shall possess them. As we nestle 
closer to our mother nature, and see how affectionately she 
welcomes us and entertains us with ever-increasing beauty 
and truth, do we not say, " Oh ! let me ever live with thee" ? 
We could not ask for a heaven of greater happiness than 
that which should give us the time and the power to explore 
life's mysteries, to comprehend nature's miracles, to catch 
the transient beauty which comes and goes on cloud, and 
river, and flower, and transcribe them on our spirits, and 
make them a part of our being. Oh ! there is enough to 
live for, in all these things present and things to come, 
to make us very real and earnest, and anxious to gather 
from men that which can make us better and stronger ; from 
the world that which shall make us love God, and wonder 
at his works ; from life and death the power to control our 
destiny ; from the things which we now have, and the pro- 
mise of those which are to come, faith, hope, and charity. 
Standing en the summit of such development, although we 
are poor, yet are we rich * although weak, we are strong ; 
although destitute, we are not forsaken ; though cast down, 
we are not destroyed ; though dying, yet behold we live ; 
for all things are ours. 



III. 

BEING BY DOING AND TRYING TO DO. 

The best and surest power in every person is that which 
springs from what they are — from their essential nature. 
And because it does come from their nature, they can not 
get outside of it, to estimate or understand it. What we 
are in our essential natures we can not tell, since we can 
only estimate ourselves by our own thought; and hence 
there is at last that power of thought which estimates, left 
unestimated. And every person, when driven, in defense 
of his convictions, from his remotest inferences inward to 
his centre of certainty, is compelled to say, " It is so be- 
cause it is so ;" or, rather, " It is so because I am what I am." 
I have a given belief : the reason I give for it is some ante- 
rior belief; and the reason for that some other still anterior, 
and so on until at last we come to the end of the series— to 
some first belief, of which no proof can be given. Or, if we 
trace any given experience inward through the narrowing, 
concentric circles of certitude, we come finally to our first 
and deepest experience, which has no other to rest on. 
Hence there is a centre of nature in us all, about which our 
characters crystallize, from which our constant personal in- 
fluence radiates, of which we must be unconscious except 
as others wonder at it or testify to its power. And yet it is 
this very power, which springs from our nature as easily as 
waters from a fall, and accomplishes results as easily as waters 



162 SELECTIONS. 

carry mill-wheels in falling ; it is this power, of which we 
think least because we know least, that constitutes our real 
worth and occasions our real usefulness. Our actual strength 
is hidden in unconsciousness, beyond the reach of pride or 
the most morbid self-inspection. Through the alchemy of 
experience the special things for which we strive are trans- 
muted into the gold of reality, and are buried in the founda- 
tions of our life. And only as our special efforts and im- 
pulses become fixed habits of activity do they become a 
part of ourselves — do they become ourselves. But then, 
when they have become habits, they no longer surprise us, 
they no longer satisfy our aspiration, because we know and 
think nothing further of them. So long as we can do a 
given thing only occasionally in choice moods and favorable 
circumstances, we take pride in it ; we ask others to see us 
do it ; we expect them to wonder at it when done. Yet so 
long as the doing of it is thus occasional, it is uncertain, and 
not a part of our own nature, upon which God and man 
can rely for permanent results. But by and by, through 
constant repetition, it becomes a habit, and then we think 
nothing of it ; then we count upon it as a part of our relia- 
ble resources, and straightway use it for practical purposes, 
and begin to strive for some new thing which is difficult 
and almost impossible. 

When the pianist begins his practice, he is glad if he can 
play passages of eighth, sixteenth, or thirty-second notes; but 
eventually he will run a sweet stream of chromatics across 
eight octaves, and trill half a thousand quavers a minute, 
and yet think no more of it than a scholar thinks of the 
alphabet while reading Shakespeare or Milton. This capa- 
city of the pianist becomes not only second nature, but 
nature to him ; and while we marvel at the rapidity of his 



BEING BY DOING AND TRYING TO DO. 1 83 

execution, he marvels that we think it wonderful. And so 
it is through the entire range of our capacities. It is what 
we are that tells permanently on others ; and it is striving to 
be what we are not, which makes us what we are. We are 
at this moment the sum of our habits. The true response 
of man's nature to God's fidelity is habit. The legitimate 
result of law acting on free-will is habitual obedience. But 
we are made so that we can not find satisfaction in what we 
are; we are not conscious of its worth, it seems so natural ; 
we are satisfied only by becoming something more ; we 
get a knowledge of our present attainment only as we try 
its capacity for new attainment. A merchant knows little 
of his real power by the routine of business which has be- 
come nature to him. Only when he measures himself by 
some new enterprise, some enlarged endeavor, does he get 
an idea of what he is and what he can do. 

Oh ! how wonderful is this power of the soul to absorb 
and appropriate through experience^, the highest possible 
developments, and to transform them into the nerve and 
fibre of our being — to sink them in the foundations of still 
higher growth. Consider how blank is the mind and soul 
of each babe ! Weaker in muscle and more helpless in 
instinct than the young of animals, it knows not that it 
hears with the ear, or sees with the eye, or smells with the 
nose ; conscious only of varied impressions, received it knows 
not how nor whence. But from birth there begins this 
experience, repeated over and over thousands, millions 
of times, until it acquires habits of hearing, seeing, 
smelling, tasting, feeling, willing, loving, aspiring, which 
become henceforth his own nature, and can not be taken 
away from him. And where or when this process shall end 
God only knows. F6r consider how quickly we take the 



184 SELECTIONS. 

greatest wonders into our daily habits, and look around for 
new wonders. Once we wondered that cars could be 
drawn by steam ; now we wonder if they are not drawn 
forty miles an hour. That miracle of steam-power is now 
as common as the muscle of our arms ; and we accept it as 
a matter of course, in our use of time and our responsibility 
for it. 

We pledge ourselves to do a given deed in Chicago two 
days hence ; we get into a car which is almost like a sitting- 
room for comfort ; we are hurled over mountain and plain, 
through swamp and prairie, as if it were the most natural 
thing that such wondrous powers should be tributary to a 
human soul. 

We can not imagine any thing which, previous to the 
experiment, would seem more miraculous than the annihila- 
tion of time and space by the telegraph ; and yet we now 
accept the telegraph as a natural increase of our responsi- 
bilities, which we are quite equal to. It is only a longer 
arm, a swifter foot, a more telescopic eye. And the same 
is true of all the great discoveries which have passed into 
habits of use and expectation. 

Who can tell the wonders which serve us day and night, 
and which we regard as our rightful servants ? Now, where 
is the end to the miracles which such a being will appro- 
priate ? To what worlds of light can you transport him, 
where he will not make his home ? Give him the flight of 
an angel, it would soon become his habit, like the telegraph ; 
give him the telescopic eye of the spirit, it would soon be- 
come his habitual range of vision ; give him angelic powers 
of art, or the most marvelous ability to invent and produce, 
he would soon cease to wonder at them. Indeed, you can 
not imagine a heaven so miraculous that man's nature could 



BEING BY DOING AND TRYING TO DO. 185 

not appropriate it as his native home. Any possible won- 
ders would eventually become like the familiar scenes and 
means of his daily life, and his soul would strive for more 
and better. Hence we see an endless growth stretched be- 
fore the soul, in which it will always strive for special ends, 
and will yet be valued and loved not for these, but for that 
which has passed into habit, nature, power. 

Now, this should teach us never to despair of success. 
In many special things we fail, but in this of experience 
never. We value life as it helps or hinders this or that che- 
rished plan; its real value may consist in something widely 
different. We estimate our power as it enables us to do this 
thing to-day and that to-morrow ; but God may be using us 
for some purpose of which we little dream. The trying to 
do certain things and to fix matters as we want them, gives 
us a certain amount of habit, and that is what we are, and 
that is what God uses, for it can be relied on ; from what we 
are goes out our best and surest power. Moses thought his 
life a failure because he could not go over the Jordan into 
the promised land ; but his life was a grand success, com- 
pared with which the going into Palestine was a small mat- 
ter. But hoping and striving to do that thing developed 
his habits of patience, and endurance, and toil, and thought, 
which were the real blessings to his people. He thought 
little of these ; but God thought much of them, and history 
has treasured them up. Jesus thought himself sent only to 
the lost sheep of the house of Israel ; but when they would 
not hear him nor come to his fold, he told his disciples 
to preach the Gospel to every creature. Yet it was the 
striving for that special thing which occasioned all his life 
and teaching ; and these the world values most, although he 



1 86 SELECTIONS. 

could not understand why one should marvel at any thing 
so natural. 

Paul in the same way sought to preach the Gospel to the 
Jews; and it was only when the Jews refused to hear him, 
only when he failed, as he thought, in his most precious 
purpose, that his real work began of carrying the Gospel to 
the Gentiles. 

Well, so it always is. We set our hearts upon the doing of 
certain special things ; we can not help that ; but in struggling 
toward them, we send off our best and truest power for 
other uses. When the horse in the treadmill starts forward, 
and doubtless feels that he is moving forward, he stands 
still so far as his purpose is concerned, yet sets in motion 
the machinery which serves a higher race of beings- 
Could he reason, at the close of the day. he might say, 
" The day has been a tiresome failure ; I stand where I stood 
this morning ;" because he dreams not that he has sawed the 
wood w T hich warms and cooks for a whole household. The 
honey-bee flies all day from flower to flower, from field to 
field, and often feels no doubt at night-fall that the day has 
proved a bad failure because he found so little honey. He 
knows not that he has been bearing through all his weary 
flights the pollen which fructifies seed and fruit. The get- 
ting of a little honey is a small matter compared with the 
fruitage of orchards which he has secured. The silk-worm 
eats and weaves his web and values his life for the pleasure 
it gives him. How little he knows of his transcendent value 
to a higher race ! The carrier-dove seeks its home and 
nothing more, little heeding that its power of flight and its 
instinct of place are performing the highest offices of love 
for man and maiden. And thus it runs through all nature, 
that the incidental power that goes out from what men and 



BEING BY DOING AND TRYING TO DO. 1 87 

things are is the best and most helpful of all power. The 
landscape upon which I look from my window, now clothed 
in the coronation-robes of autumn, how divine it is ! It 
seems to have been made for the inspiration it gives me. 
But how is it ? Every object there lives not for me, not for 
its own beauty, but for a direct selfish purpose. That 
maple-tree, blazing with crimson fire, has lived so far for the 
sake of producing its fruit. But see what have been its 
other uses, of which it took no thought. It has made so 
much wood for fire, for furniture, for ornament ; innumera- 
ble birds have lived and sung all summer in its leafy boughs, 
millions of bees have sucked honey from its exuding sap ; 
winds have harped in its leaves and gathered life from its 
sweet breath ; weary cattle have lain in its shade ; its form 
has delighted every passer-by; and now that its summer 
children are to die, it puts on its brightest holiday attire 
in token of gratitude for such a season of union and love. 

Thus the tree, impelled by its habit to seek one end, in 
seeking that has unconsciously preached all summer its 
great gospel of beauty and use. It is thus with us all. 
Like the horse in the treadmill, we pace the weary round of 
our accustomed work — week, month, year, in and out — and 
seem at its close just where we were at the beginning. We 
may have a few more dollars ; but even these have lost their 
peculiar charm for us. We know not that this very tread- 
mill life of ours, and of such as we, has been turning the ma- 
chinery of God's providence to society ; that all the moral, 
social, political blessings of agriculture, commerce, manufac- 
tures, and arts are thus created and bestowed upon men. 

Like the honey-bee, we hasten from one enterprise to 
another; from one hope of finding rest and peace to 
another, and return, oh ! how often, feeling that it is all a 



l88 SELECTIONS. 

failure. It is of small consequence that we have failed to 
gather the honey of satisfaction for ourselves ; it is a small 
gain compared with the pollen of help, and cheer, and in- 
spiration which w r e may have borne to one waiting soul after 
another, which w r e were not seeking nor expecting to bless. 
Like the carrier-dove, we long, aspire, and pray for the 
spirit's home of ideal life, and truth, and beauty ; we strive 
for it, and plume our flight to reach it. There is too much 
power in this flight and striving to be wasted on any single 
purpose of ours; so God secretes his message of mercy, 
charity, and love in our unconscious nature, a blessing to the 
poor, and sick, and friendless all along our way. And while 
we shall expect God's approbation for having achieved so 
daring a flight, we shall be surprised when we learn that it 
was only the incidental work which we did, without prizing 
it, almost without knowing it — feeding the hungry, clothing 
the naked, visiting the sick — which made our lives Christ- 
like. Such are the subtle ties which unite us each to all and 
all to each, that no one's life is or can be useless. Yea, it is 
this, the treadmill-work of each in his place, which secures 
all permanent blessings. There is no failure, there can be 
none. We must insist upon doing impossible things, because 
in trying those we entice our habitual strength out of its 
routine, and we get some idea of it ; but it is surest and 
best in habit of which we think and know little. Raphael 
is ambitious to write a poem, Dante to paint a picture, 
Goethe to dethrone Newton, and we to sit down at the 
right hand or at the left in the kingdom of heaven ; but 
Raphael, Dante, Goethe, are known and loved only for their 
natural work, which they could not help doing; and we shall 
be known and loved most for quite other effects than those 
on which we pride ourselves. Oh ! these thoughts of mutual 



BEING BY DOING AND TRYING TO DO. 1 89 

helpfulness ought to encourage you all, dear friends, to be 
faithful, and courageous, and cheerful in the lot and under 
the responsibilities where God has placed you. You can 
not live a true life one day without being a missionary. In 
some deep, sure way each right deed and purpose of ours 
is taken into God's plan of help and blessing for all. 

" Little thinks, in the field, yon red-cloaked clown 
Of thee from the hill-top looking down ; 
The heifer that lows on the upland farm, 
Far -heard, lows not thine ear to charm ; 
The sexton tolling his bell at noon 
Deems not that great Napoleon 
Stops his horse and lists with delight 
Whilst his files sweep around yon Alpine height ; 
Nor knowest thou what argument 
Thy life to thy neighbor's creed has lent ; 
All are needed by each one, 
Nothing is fair or good alone." 



IV. 

BINDING AND LOOSING. 

There is but one law at the centre of all things, and that 
law is the single thought of God out of which the universe 
sprung. And as God is love, it follows that the law is 
loving ; and the putting one's self in harmony with that law 
is being loved of God and loving him. There is but one 
system of laws, everywhere. Love and hate, harmony and 
discord, heat and cold, light and darkness, are the same 
everywhere, because the universe is a unit and the ex- 
pression of one thought. Now, the spirit of a little child, 
which, as I said, is the spirit of directness, simplicity, fear- 
lessness, intuition, faith, is the spirit which puts the heart 
of man in such relation to goodness, the mind of man in 
such relation to truth, his conscience in such relation to 
right, and his soul in such relation toward God, that he finds 
this central law of harmony ; 

"A motion and a spirit that impels 
All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 
And rolls through all things.'' 

It sets the sails of his life-ship so that all winds speed its 
course. It builds the habitation of his personal being beside 
the river whose streams make glad the city of God. What 
is bound in this spirit is bound in heaven, and what is loosed 
in tills spirit is loosed in heaven, because the same law pre- 



BINDING AND LOOSING. 191 

vails in heaven as on earth. It followed as a matter of 
course that the disciples would build up an everlasting fel- 
lowship if they founded it upon the spirit. No man had 
any special power to administer a law which administers it- 
self. Every man had the privilege of bringing his life into 
a line with that power which is of God and not of us. 
Therefore, said Jesus, he who would be greatest amon^j 
you let him be the servant of all. 

This chapter then (Matt. 18) is the statement of a spirit- 
law which it concerns us more to understand than any 
other. If I were asked what is the one great want in the 
sum of the world's knowledge, I should say it is the want 
of knowledge of law, physical, intellectual, moral, and spi- 
ritual. And if I were asked to say what was lacking in the 
ability of men, I should say the ability to conform to law. 
Of course I include in this the highest and most transcen- 
dent reciprocal activities of the finite and the infinite. 

But you see how it is with all material development : the 
success of every people in agriculture, manufactures, and 
commerce depends upon their knowledge of law and their 
ability to bring their actions into harmony with it. God 
has extended his right hand to man in the elemental and 
dynamic forces which everywhere work with such constancy 
and order; and wmen man learns to trust this constancy 
and work in this order, he becomes a co-worker with God 
in nature, and what he binds on the earth is bound in 
heaven. 

Take agriculture as an instance. Until the farmer has 
learned that the seasons succeed each other in regular order ; 
that heat and cold, darkness and light, the early and the 
latter rain, however capricious in detail, are still constant to 
a law, his utmost strength is nothing but weakness. If he 



I 9 3 



SELECTIONS. 



sows his seed on any fine day, whether it be in spring, or 
summer, or autumn, he has no security of its growth ; for 
he does not know whether heaven will work with him or 
against him. The very elements and forces which stand 
ready to sprout and grow his grain might, for aught he 
knows, enter into league to destroy it. But when he learns 
the laws of climate and of seed, and the relation of these to 
labor, then he is in harmony with the creation. Then the 
same elements which before were hostile become helpful. 
Then for him suns rise and set ; for him lightnings gleam, 
and thunders roll, and dews fall. The winds are angels 
which blow the breath of life into his grass and corn. The 
sunbeams are his Raphaels and Titians, coloring the earth 
and heavens, to the pleasure of his eye. The storm-clouds 
dip their buckets in the sea and sprinkle his fields with the 
treasures of the rain. For what he binds on earth is bound 
in heaven. 

The history of commerce is the same. So long as man 
had no knowledge of the law of the wind and the water, 
they were hostile to him. When he learned to bring his 
ability into harmony with theirs, navigation became possi- 
ble ; and from being barely possible, it has grown to be 
secure. 

This principle needs no further illustration from material 
and practical life. You are acting upon it every day. You 
know that the everlasting faithfulness is pledged to support 
you when you seek it through law. That is the key which 
unlocks the infinite helpfulness. It is good because God is 
good. It is constant because God is faithful. It is inevi- 
table because God is omnipotent. And in proportion as 
one realm of discord after another is entered and possessed 
by a knowledge of law, does the sphere of man's harmoni- 



BINDING AND LOOSING. 1 93 

ous residence under the will of God extend. But the readi- 
ness with which God cooperates with man in agriculture, 
manufactures, and the useful arts, is not one whit abated in 
the realm of intellectual, moral, aesthetic, and religious life. 
There, too, there is no caprice, but everlasting fidelity. 
There no seed sown in the right soil shall fail of its fruit for 
lack of divine help. He that seeks for truth shall find it, if 
he seek not for gain, nor to be greatest in the kingdom, but 
only for truth. And when he has found truth, what is it 
but a law ? And when he has found law, he has found 
God. And he may pledge all his wealth of life-hopes upon 
truth, and he shall not be bankrupt; for what is thus bound 
on earth is bound in heaven. 

" Truth only needs to be for once spoke out, 
And there's such music in her, such strange rhythm, 
As makes men's memories her joyous slaves, 
And clings around the soul, as the sky clings 
Round the mute earth, forever beautiful ; 
And, if o'erclouded, only to burst forth 
More all-embracingly divine and clear. 
Get but the truth once uttered, and 'tis like 
A star new born, that drops into its place, 
And which, once circling in its placid round, 
Not all the tumult of the earth can shake." 

That same perception has always passed before prophetic 
eyes, and it is true according to the law of our text. 

Still more emphatically practical is the prevalence of this 
fact in all moral life. The perception of right is the know- 
ledge of law. As truth is God's thinking, so right is God's 
working. It is the key which opens for us the armory of 
infinite resources. God does right ; and all this system of 
life has its source in a purpose of right, is controlled by laws 
which help the right, and progresses toward the triumph of 
13 



194 SELECTIONS. 

the right. However we may fail to account for all the facts 
assumed in such a premise, or to supply all the links in the 
chain of such an inference, there can be no two ways about 
the conclusion. And hence it follows of necessity that in 
proportion as we do right we work with God, or rather he 
works with us and for us, just as he works for the farmer 
who sows his seed in the right soil and at the right time. 
And however the success of the right may be delayed 
through the partial perception of it by society, unless God 
can fail, the right can not fail. That which is bound in 
human relations by a perfect right is bound everywhere. 
And for the same reason that which is not thus bound, that 
which does not dovetail into the purposes of God, is neces- 
sarily loosed, and therefore destroyed. The passenger in a 
railroad-car, while he is bound to the car in the proper way, 
shares the motion of the train, and is helped on to his end ; 
but if he once loose himself from that union with the 
moving body, he is at once destroyed. So one who goes 
on in the train of God's moral purposes, and binds himself 
to them through the right way, is carried along with them, 
and is sure to triumph with them ; but if he dares to loose 
himself therefrom, then, sooner or later, he is hurled to his 
destruction. 

But whoever would place his moral life in such harmo- 
nious relations with the purposes of God must not seek in 
the spirit of a place-hunter or fortune-seeker. He must not 
ask of God's anointed ones, " Who shall be greatest in this 
heavenly kingdom ?" but, in the spirit of a child, with pure 
heart and open eyes, and wondering tone, let him ask, 
" Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do ?" 

This is really what is meant when we say that we are 
happy only when we do right. Moral happiness shows 



BINDING AND LOOSING. 1 95 

moral harmony. When the musician tunes his violin, he 
fixes one string at concert-pitch, and then tightens the oth- 
ers up through all the flats and sharps, and even through 
the lower harmonies, until they strike the right fifth below 
and above the key-note. The magnificent tone that it 
gives out when the strings are at the right tension, is the 
symbol to the master's quick ear that his fairy-shell is in 
tune and ready to strike out a perfect tone in answer to his 
nicest touch. So a soul passes through all the flats and 
sharps and lower harmonies of wrong-doing until it strikes 
the harmony of right, and then it rings in unison with the 
key-note of God's will, to which the morning stars sang to- 
gether and in which all the sons of God do shout for joy. 
The happiness of goodness is the ring of the instrument in 
tune. 

Let this be thy purpose, O friend ! to observe the law of 
right and to do it. Then the sunshine and the storm, the 
night and the day, the heat and the cold of life's discipline 
will foster and mature the grain for garners in the sky. This 
is the great hope of a nation which puts itself on the side of 
right. It is then bound to the train of providential pur- 
poses and influences. This is the ground of my hope in the 
proclamation of freedom. It is simple obedience to a law, 
as much as sowing wheat in the spring. It is clasping the 
extended hand of God. It is putting ourselves in a condi- 
tion to be ripened by all the moral and spiritual elements 
through winter or summer. If the seed does not blossom 
and fruiten a hundred fold, it will be either because it has 
fallen by the way-side of party prejudice; or on the stony 
places of selfishness, where there is no depth of earth; or 
among the thorns of onice-seeking, which will spring up and 
choke it. 



196 SELECTIONS. 

There is still a subtler relation of man to God in the laws 
of the spirit, through love, and prayer, and aspiration. It 
is possible through these spirit-graces to enter into perfect 
union with the infinite. This, too, is but the perception of, 
and obedience to, transcendent law. It is the spirit which 
unites the father and the child. Though the child in its 
weakness may not be able to take the father's right hand 
extended in power and in truth, it may meet him in love. 
The pure in heart will see God, for perfect love casteth out 
all fear. We quickly forgive a child who loves us dearly 
his mistakes in trying to understand our law, and his errors 
in trying to comprehend our thought. And God comes 
out to meet man even when he is a great way off, if his face 
is bright with love. Herein is love, not that we love God, 
but that he first loved us, as a mother loves her unborn 
child. Through affection, through love to our brother 
whom we have seen, through the love of beauty everywhere, 
we enter into secret fellowship with the " divinity which 
shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will." It gives 
us a glance behind the curtain ; we feel the pulsations of 
the central heart and enter into sympathy with the central 
law. We get near the living centre where the swift wheel 
of our mysterious fortune seems to stand still. 

"We become a living soul ; 
While with an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, 
We see into the life of things." 

The great worth of Jesus' life to the world lies in this : it 
is a practical illustration of the way to live so that what we 
bind to our minds, our hearts, our souls, on the earth, shall 
be bound in heaven. He is a living witness to the way, 
the truth, and the life. And the great beauty of this law 



BINDING AND LOOSING. 1 97 

is, that we may enter into perfect harmony with it anywhere 
in the smallest corner of life where present duty has planted 
us. The one practical lesson taught by this law is the duty 
of self-surrender; not in weakness but in strength; not 
waiting passively to be played upon by the infinite powers, 
but by bringing our entire energies into concord with them. 
Self-surrender is the practical duty wherein the two extremes 
of speculation meet — the fatalist from the one hand and the 
mystic from the other. The latter would feel his will swal- 
lowed up in infinite love. The former would feel his will 
lost in inevitable law. The difference is speculative and 
not practical. Law is God's working, and love is God's 
feeling. His love and labor are identical. So should our 
love and labor be. For then our feeble lives might so be 
bound to the infinite life that whatever they secured to 
themselves here would be secured everywhere. 

O the everlasting faithfulness ! how it works when we 
wake and when we sleep, when we weep and when we re- 
joice. We can not flee from its presence. We would not, 
but would hide ourselves in a cheerful self-surrender beneath 
its overshadowing wings, and live forever in its beautiful 

pavilion. 

" Like warp and woof, all destinies 
Are woven fast ; 
Linked in sympathy, like the keys 
Of an organ vast. 

Pluck one thread, and the web ye mar ; 

Break but one 
Of a thousand keys, and the paining jar 

Through all will run." 

O restless spirit ! wherefore strain 

Beyond thy sphere ? 
Heaven and hell, with their joy and pain, 

Are now and here.' , 



V. 

THE JOY OF JESUS. 

The men of the New Testament were men of joy. They 
differ from those of the Old Testament only in this : their 
joy is too deep for words ; too quiet and all-pervading to 
be wholly spoken, even in worship ; for a great joy, like a 
great sorrow, craves silence and mocks at words. All the 
higher emotions require a still and quiet heart for their 
home ; else they stay but a short time in one place. 

Some people use joy all up at once in a grand illumina- 
tion of impulse that leaves the night cold and dark — so do 
the Methodists. Others use it as we do coal — put it in the 
heart of the furnace, and silently warm the whole house 
with it — so did the Quakers. Such is the New Testament 
joy — a silent, all-pervading gladness, which warmed into life 
every noble and manly quality. A joy hid in the very roots 
of the tree of life ; but making all its sap sweet, its trunk 
firm, its boughs graceful, its leaf green, and its fruit rich and 
mellow. 

Do you think that Jesus was never glad nor happy ; 
never felt his whole soul thrilled with holy joy ? He whose 
soul was all music; whose lips poured out melody like 
wine; whose spirit played on every string of the human 
heart ; whose eye missed no touch of beauty, from the lily 
that glorified the grass to the lightning that leaped from one 
part of the heaven unto the other ! Is it possible for a soul 



THE JOY OF JESUS. 1 99 

to be so entirely in harmony with the universe and its God, 
so sensitive to the touch of spirit-fingers, and yet be 
nothing but a " man of sorrows" ? I think not. You say 
that he sorrowed for sin as none other, and felt the wicked- 
ness of the world as none other. True; but did he not also 
see more virtue and moral beauty than ever blessed a mortal 
eye ? We should have mourned over Magdalene as only a 
lost one ; but he saw so much good in her to rejoice in, that 
he said, " Neither do I condemn thee." We look upon 
prodigals as objects for our tears only; but he heard the 
music and dancing which would celebrate his return, even 
while he was feeding on swine-husks. We should have lost 
all patience with the vacillations of Peter and the rest ; they 
seemed only to endear them to him. 

I tell you that no man can look upon this universe as 
Jesus did and not be happy. His biographers have natu- 
rally given only the severe, missionary side of his life. But 
there was another side, a rich, sunny side, to it, which we 
would as gladly know. He certainly enjoyed social life. 
He went to a wedding of his friend and countryman, and 
made him a present of the best wine. He was often 
asked out to dine, even with the Roman officers and sinners, 
and he always went. At evening, when the day's teaching 
was over, he walked out to Bethany, to spend the night with 
Mary, and Martha, and Lazarus. Was there no rejoicing 
there ? No recounting the experiences of the day ? No real 
human enjoyment of the home circle ? No real friendly talk, 
as between men and women ? It would be a libel upon him 
and his doctrine to say so. And besides, we have conclusive 
evidence that he wore a smiling face in this — that children 
loved him and went to him, and he took them up in his 
arms. Now, children know who love them and who do not ? 



2 00 SELECTIONS. 

and they know a happy face from an unhappy one. Those 
children who wanted to get near to Jesus, and sit on his 
knee, couldn't have been hired or whipped to go to John 
Calvin, or Jonathan Edwards, or Dr. Emmons. Think of 
a little child wanting to go to such ministers as we knew 
when we were children, and especially when they were in 
the very act of teaching, with all their church members 
around them ; when their faces were strung up to the tension 
of infant damnation; "knitting their brows like gathering 
storm " ! Jesus was no such man. There was no glare of 
awful dogma in his eye, no tone of vengeance in his voice, 
else he would never have been the children's friend. They 
felt drawn to him, and he to them. We can just guess with 
what a yearning he pressed them to his heart, rejoicing in 
spirit that, though God had hid the everlasting truth from the 
wise and prudent, he had revealed it unto babes. He must 
have loved children, or they would not have loved him. If 
he did love them, he must have been happy as often as he 
saw their bright and trustful faces greeting him like a fresh 
" Good morning " from God. 



VI. 

REJOICE IN THE LORD. 

Joy is the ring of health in any man or woman. Sadness 
and melancholy come to us all in a personal way, and we 
must yield as the tree bows to a tempest. But it is not the 
normal condition. When the storm is past, the tree rights 
itself, and stands straight and handsome. So ought a soul 
to rebound from sorrow, and not cherish it as a thing to be 
loved. It will not please the dead we grieve for, to see us 
sad. Paul enjoined the Corinthians expressly upon this 
matter, that they must not sorrow as others who have no 
hope, lest the* heathen should think that the Christian reli- 
gion was not so cheerful and hopeful as their own. And 
that is the right frame of mind to cherish ; the habit of look- 
ing at the bright side, and hoping for the best. It is best for 
ourselves ; it is most helpful to others, and it shows a more 
perfect trust in God. 

It is best for ourselves, because it is the condition of all 
kinds of growth. Every thing that grows is cheerful in its 
growth. The mind grows best when the heart is hopeful. 
It is then in the same mood in which the creation was 
made. God made the universe in a loving mood, and 
hence, as we put ourselves into the same frame of mind, we 
get hold of its secrets, and comprehend its truths. If you 
want to enjoy a piece of music fully, you need an argument 
or libretto, which puts you into the author's mood ; then 



202 SELECTIONS. 

the spirit and life of the music runs from his soul into yours, 
and you sigh and smile, and love and hate with him. So it 
is in our relation to this life. God ordained it in a mood of 
love; a love, indeed, which often rises into the higher and 
grander offices of discipline, under which generations some- 
times bend and break ; but still, as each long-hidden purpose 
comes to light, it is hailed as a token of a love grander than 
we had dreamed, more beautiful than we had hoped. I 
will listen to a cheerful teacher, for he is in the way of 
truth; but away with whine and snivel in theology as in 
science. Why, out of all the moods which human beings 
are capable of, they should have chosen the grave and 
mournful alone for worship, I know not. You may talk 
with a man upon all other subjects in a bright, cheerful 
way, and natural tone, as if there were grand things to live 
and hope for; but the moment you touch upon religion 
and the good God who gave all, and the good soul that 
may inherit all, you are amazed at the change* which comes 
over him. His chin drops, his words are drawled, his tone 
changed ; he stops laughing and wants to cry, as if you had 
referred to some delicate family matter which had broken 
his heart. The old Jew would have been disgusted with 
such performances before the Lord, and washed his hands 
in token of purification. If there is any one thing for which 
I respect Beecher more than another, it is for the merciless 
war which he has waged upon the whole tribe of pious 
croakers and snivelers, and the way in which he has insisted 
upon manly and womanly speech upon this as all other 
matters. 

There is a sublime trust implied in calm and conquering 
cheerfulness. The soul seems to have such an understand- 
ing with the universe ; such a childlike confidence that its 



REJOICE IN THE LORD. 203 

Father will do all things well. That a being so frail as man, 
with such a destiny at stake, in a condition so grand, walk- 
ing amid forces whose rage he is impotent to control — that 
such a one can be cheerful and happy, shows an inborn 
conviction that God holds them all in the hollow of his 
hand. How sublime is such a trust! How it contrasts 
with the fearful gloom of guilt! How thrillingly Robert 
Browning brings the two into contrast in " Pippa Passes!" 
In the palace of the murdered Cenci are Ottima and her 
paramour, hating the light and all living sounds, and mock- 
ing at all the wealth which crime has brought them. Un- 
der their window, the little factory-girl passes to enjoy her 
one holiday, and sings as she goes, 

" The year's at the spring ; the day's at the morn ; 
The morning's at seven ; the hill-side's dew-pearled ; 
The lark's on the wing; the snail's on the thorn ; 
God's in his heaven ; all's right with the world." 

Oh ! that cheerful, childlike trust, which believes that all 
is right with the world because God is in heaven ; which 
believes that whatever storms shake earth or heaven, the 
everlasting pillars are not shaken. Is it not sublime ? 



VII. 

THE LIFE WHICH NOW IS. 

The true condition of growth is fixedness and fidelity in 
the present condition. The best way to become a perfect 
man is to be a perfect child. The only hope of being able 
to think, and speak, and understand, as a man or a woman, 
lies in our first understanding, thinking, and speaking as a 
boy or girl. This thought is getting to be the conviction 
of the world more and more. It is the undertone of mo- 
rality in all the best moods of the day. It is the direct 
teaching of the best poetry. Tennyson, the Brownings, 
Whittier, Lowell, Longfellow, and the. rest unite in a grand 
resolve that, 

" Henceforth my heart shall sigh no more 
For olden time and holier shore ; 
God's love and blessing then and there 
Are now, and here, and everywhere." 

And I believe that the pulpit-teaching of all live men was 
never so harmonious as at the present hour upon this sub- 
ject : that the true way of possessing the future is through 
fidelity to the present ; and that the old method of teaching 
men to spend this life in looking away from it, either for- 
ward or backward, is simply mischievous. Concerning the 
old dogmas, the live and inspired men of all sects are say- 
ing, as Jesus said to the disciple, " Let the dead bury the 



THE LIFE WHICH NOW IS. 205 

dead," while we follow the Truth. The Church of Eng- 
land is honeycombed with men who are saying, virtually, 
" When the church was a child, it spake as a child, it thought 
as a child, it understood as a child ; now it has become a 
man, and it must put away childish things." And the same 
is true of every church that has a history. Hard by every 
old school there are a dozen new schools, as by every stump 
where last year stood an old, fruitless tree, this year stands a 
score of sprouts, withy and succulent with the new life of the 
root. The true law of growth is this : each human soul is 
rooted in a given condition, where birth, or accident, or 
necessity places it. Its roots spread out into all the 
possible relations of that condition — love of father and 
mother, brother and sister, neighbor and friend, work and 
play, wealth and comfort. Some condition of this kind 
every human being is placed in at birth, and through that 
he is to grow into all that he can rightfully attain. Now, 
the old method of enlarging one's life was to pull it up by 
the roots, through miraculous conversion, and transplant it 
to a new soil. The consequence was, that the greater por- 
tion dried up, and became dead to the age and its interests. 
The natural way is to remain in this soil of nature — this 
condition of necessity — and from that centre strike roots 
outward to the richest soils, and downward to the deepest 
springs. God has placed no being in a barren soil; no one 
where he may not find the elements of immortal life ; none 
where, through perfect fidelity to its condition, its roots may 
not reach out to embrace the earth, and spread out branches 
and leaves to heal and overshadow it. Thus, Charlotte 
Bronte's life was like an acorn dropped in the cleft of a 
rock — a condition as hard as infelicity could make it. For 
a time, its lateral growth was choked by its grim surround- 



2O0 SELECTIONS. 

ings ; but at last its roots struck down so deep that they 
underran the rock, and then reached outward to enrich 
themselves from the treasures of the whole earth. And 
thus it may be with every life, if it is perfectly faithful and 
true to the condition in which it is placed. It may grow 
outward into the possession of all that remains for the chil- 
dren of God. 

The figure which Paul uses to illustrate this truth is an 
uncommonly happy one. It is literally true and figura- 
tively true. It is correct as a rule for the training of chil- 
dren ; correct also as an illustration of the true law of 
growth for individuals, institutions, and nations. A perfect 
child is one that speaks, and understands, and thinks as a 
child. If you teach a child to speak, and understand, and 
think like a man, you make him neither man nor child, but 
a sort of human parrot. If you allow his healthy hunger 
for what is above him to run on before his capacity, and 
taste here and there a little of every thing, before he has the 
strength to comprehend any thing, you have destroyed that 
peculiar charm and felicity of childhood, namely, its wonder 
and aspiration. In its stead you have not a man, but a 
kind of moral and intellectual Tom Thumb, indifferent, stu- 
pid, and superficial, and indisposed to believe that there can 
be any thing new or wonderful. Nothing can be so sad as this 
forestalling of the thought and speech of childhood, not with 
manliness and womanliness, but with mannishness and wo- 
manishness. One sometimes sees a lad of ten or twelve sum- 
mers with the air of the Roman emperor who offered a king- 
dom to the man that would invent for him a new pleasure. 
Such boys and girls will never put away childish things. 
That is not the road which leads to manhood. Because 
they have been mannish children they will be childish men. 






THE LIFE WHICH NOW IS. 207 

How much healthier is the simplicity, the romping, awk- 
ward glee, and stammering wonder of a natural child ! 
How much fresher his judgments or misjudgments of the 
world! How much keener and more penetrating his 
thought ! 

God keeps a new generation of protestants always on 
hand; an army of truth-tellers who come out of heaven 
into our homes, and see right through our cant, and affecta- 
tion, and inconsistency ; and compel us to blush, and whis- 
per, and shut the door, and send them to bed. If it were 
not for this constant influx of nonconformists and image- 
breakers, God knows to what extent we. should carry our 
falsehoods and dissimulations. "The fresh gaze of the 
child," says Carlyle, " is richer in significance than the fore- 
casting of the most indubitable seer." No matter how 
often the restless longing of the child is brought up against 
the boundary of his undevelopment, and obliged to hunt 
over and over again the field of his present possession. No 
matter how much he tries to imitate a man, or to act the 
play of manhood on his little stage and in his little theatre- 
dresses. All such affectations are harmless, and only show 
that the appetite for what is to come has not been spoiled. 
The mischief is in trying to satisfy this craving for the future 
by taking the child on to the real stage and satisfying his 
curiosity, so that there is no longer any enjoyment in child- 
ish imitations of life. A part of the very life of the soul is 
this hunger and itching for what is before it. And hence, 
if you satisfy the hunger too quickly, you take so much life 
out of the child or man. That irritation is the friction 
which produces electricity and excites activity. It is the 
very longing for something to come, and faith that that 
something will come, which gives birth to wonder. It is 



208 SELECTIONS. 

that which makes him look at each familiar object as if out 
of it might spring at any time the thing which he longs for. 
He is never quite certain that he shall not find a fairy in 
the cup of a lily or the heart of a rose. He is not certain 
that the birds will not stop singing, and tell him where the 
fairy-queen lives. He does not wholly doubt that he shall 
yet see a winged angel fly out of a summer cloud, and show 
him the golden throne. It is this wonder which flutters 
about the outer edge of his weakness, and tells him that all 
things are possible : it is this which smites the Memnon 
statue of our familiar life, and makes it sing in the morning- 
light of childhood. When compared with this, how stale, 
and flat, and unprofitable is the premature maturity of a 
child who has tasted just enough of every thing it has longed 
for to wonder at nothing ! This is a danger to the children 
of the rich and a compensation to the children of the poor. 
For I suppose that the hope of possession always occasions 
more joy than the reality. 

There is an intermediate stage between childhood and 
manhood when the youth dreams indeed, but dreams that 
he dreams ; and, as in the night, when we dream that we 
dream, we are near waking. Then the growing faculties 
give the strength which entitles him to the possession of 
that which he has longed for. And if he has been a per- 
fect child, what a recompense awaits him as the reward of 
his fidelity! Slowly he comes alongside the men and 
things which he has wondered at in the distance. When 
he reaches them, they do not satisfy him, and he stretches 
on after others. 

At this age parents sometimes grow alarmed to see that 
the dear little idol, the plaything and joy of their home, has 
a destiny of his own, and belongs not to them, but to God 



THE LIFE WHICH NOW IS. 209 

and himself. He was loaned, not given to them. And 
some parents, when they see the child putting away childish 
things, mourn over it and try to keep him a child. They 
find it hard to recognize in this toy a new thought of God, 
a new candidate for immortality, a new destiny to be 
wrought upon and ripened by the realities of personal 
thought, and speech, and understanding. They are slow 
to respect his peculiarities or give place to his aspirations. 
This may be right to a certain extent, but it is very dan- 
gerous. You can not be too careful, parents, in using the 
leading-strings of a youth who is feeling for his own direc- 
tion. Rules are of small value ; love hopeth all things, 
believeth all things, endureth all things; and love never 
faileth. 

This history of the child is the history of institutions. 
Churches, creeds, rituals have their beginning in a state of 
childhood — in an age of earnestness, sincerity, and fearless- 
ness. They speak the truth, embody the hope, the fear, 
the superstition of the age in which they grow. As such 
they are true to themselves. They are planted in a soil of 
necessity, just as the soul is. They are born usually with- 
out a wish or a thought of their own. The creed, and 
form, and name of churches and institutions come as un- 
consciously as the thought and speech of a child. In their 
beginning they are perfectly true to the attainment of the 
time. Its knowledge and ignorance, its light and darkness, 
its strength and weakness are reflected in them, as the same 
necessities are in the still waters of childhood. But the 
world moves; the ancient boundaries of knowledge are 
extended. Where the former time saw only dragon, and 
goblin, and griffin, ai>d devil, and miracle, the new time 
sees order, and consistency, and beauty, and God. Now, 
14 



2IO SELECTIONS. 

if the world would only allow the child to become a man, 
and put away childish things, and speak the truth about the 
new thought and the new discovery, institutions would grow 
as trees and children do, by constantly adding new life to 
themselves. But they will not. There are always living at 
the same time those who see nothing but what was in the 
childish speech, understanding, and thought, and those who 
want to put away these childish things and become men. 
There are always those who feel about the creed and the 
church as some mothers do about their children : it is bet- 
ter that they should always be babies than to strike off into 
the mountain-road of manhood. They are annoyed at the 
way in which these young protestants of the ages tell the 
truth. They find it hard to respect the opinions of these 
nurslings reared on their own bosoms, and they try to bully 
or frighten each new generation of thinkers into thinking 
the old thought and saying the old creed. And this expe- 
riment is tried over and over again, and always with the 
same result — the old school breeds a new school, the high 
church a low church, the orthodox a Hicksite, the right 
wing a left wing, the conservative a radical. And so, instead 
of a growth like that of morning into noon, and noon into 
night ; a growth like that of youth into manhood, and man- 
hood into old age — always putting away the childish and tak- 
ing on the manly and womanly — we see a growth by shocks 
and jars, like the purification of the air by thunder-storms, 
or a renewing of the earth by drought or flood. The 
stream of history is always broken by ragged points ; and 
each step forward is a new birth, whose throes and pains 
fill the world with dismay. 

And so, friends, death seems to be a kind of war, a shock 
of summer-storm, through which we put away the childish 



THE LIFE WHICH NOW IS. 211 

things of earth and begin the manhood of heaven. We 
should no more anticipate it by the forerunning of fancy 
than we do manhood in childhood. The very mystery and 
uncertainty of the hope are parts of its greatest blessing. 
Could the vail be withdrawn which separates the two worlds, 
and the soul be permitted to look upon those things which 
the heart of man can not conceive, it would unfit us for the 
hard work which we are to do and the hard trial which we 
are to bear in this world. Even those who have, as by vi- 
sion, seen before them the spirit-world, seem to have been 
unsettled by it, and unfitted for harmonious residence in this 
life. That hunger for the unknown future is one of the 

Imost powerful stimulants to fidelity — one of the noblest 
inspirations to the thought and wonder of men. How 
eagerly have the human powers, goaded by this yearning to 
prove immortality, explored the mysteries of heaven and 
earth! They have questioned every living and inanimate 
thing; they have analyzed the subtlest human capacities 
and weighed the unseen powers, in the hope that they might 
find the elixir of life, that they might catch in things seen 
at least some type or symbol of the things not seen. But 
had immortality lain level to our faculties, and been as obvi- 
ous as life, we should have been as careless or thoughtless 
of it as inhabitants of the tropics are of the fruits and 
roots which satisfy their hunger without toil. Depend upon 
it, those golden gates are wisely shut against our mortal pow- 
ers. Thank God that rays enough have overleaped them 
to give to us a foretaste of the things that are to be ! If, in 
this childhood of our existence, we think as children, under- 
stand as children, and speak as children, we shall in due 
time begin to dream ^hat we are dreaming, and awake to 
dream no more. It is life that never dies, and life is ours, 



212 SELECTIONS. 

and life is God's; life is the soul and reality of every thing. 
And as we are true to life in all the different stages of our 
growth, and speak honestly of it, and think truly of it, and 
understand it wisely, so shall we be prepared to enter upon 
that eternal manhood where we shall see as we are seen, 
and know as we are known. 



VIII. 

THE PROVIDENCE OF NECESSITY. 

The nature of man is the scholar in the school of life. 
And hence, like any other scholar, he is not made for the 
school, but the school is made for him ; he is not made for 
his teachers, but his teachers for him. The office cf all its 
instructors is, not to make nature over again, but to aid its 
development; not to create it, but to correct it. Its true 
law of growth is by secretion from widiin by the laws of its 
being, as an oak-tree grows; not by accretion from without, as 
a snow-ball grows. All the good which can come to a soul 
must come from its growth, not from its reconstruction. To 
instruct this immortal pupil in all the branches of his edu- 
cation, God creates geniuses of art, of science, of philoso- 
phy, of religion, and inspires them with the necessity of ut- 
terance and a mission. In their special departments they 
are indeed far wiser than the nature they teach ; but, com- 
pared with the whole and varied wisdom of God enveloped 
in that nature, the wisdom of their specialty is very small. 
One is the actual development of a human being in one 
branch of knowledge in this period of time ; the other is the 
possible development of a human being in all knowledge 
through all time. But it seems to be the finite condition of 
genius that it possess all faith in its own specialty, and of 
course it is essential to its mission. Hence, it is almost cer- 
tain to pour itself forth in efforts to reconstruct nature, to 



214 SELECTIONS. 

make men and women over again after the model of its 
own idea. But this nature must resist to the death. No- 
thing could be worse for her than such a reconstruction; 
therefore she avails herself of the inertia of undevelopment 
always found in some corner of the soul and of society, and 
thus resists her destruction. This inertia is often positive 
wickedness in its possessor, and it sometimes crucifies its 
teacher and friend: but it becomes providence to society; 
for the crucified one rests from the vain labor of reconstruc- 
tion, and stimulates and inspires all souls with his life and 
light. It sometimes seems to me that man hints at a 
broader and more benevolent system of Divine Providence 
through what he denies than through what he accepts; 
through what he resists than through what he receives; 
through what he is not than through what he is. For when 
we look through society, and see what it denies, what it re- 
sists, and what it is not, we can not but wonder that law, or 
social order, or social progress exist at all. And who can 
look upon his own life, and see how indifferent, and unteach- 
able, and inert he has been, and how thin the partition is 
which separates him from the poor, and unfortunate, and 
outcasts around him, without exclaiming, " By the grace of 
God, I am what I am " ? 

And if we must pay such a great price to protect nature 
from reconstruction, according to the fair-seeming plans of 
inspired teachers, how magnificent must the development of 
that nature be to atone for such waste and apparent loss ! 
If there were no providence even in these shadows, if no 
praise could come from this wrath of men, then there 
would indeed follow what the croakers of every age are 
always predicting, a general dissolution and return to chaos, 
universal atheism, unbelief, and utter annihilation of the old 



THE PROVIDENCE OF NECESSITY. 215 

distinctions between right and wrong. But things do not 
go to pieces nor dissolve. Men do not become atheists, 
nor renounce their recognition of right and wrong. All 
things are permeated with a principle of life which preserves 
all that is essential to them. Nature has wonderful resour- 
ces, and is always saving herself by her own vitality. She 
has taught all her teachers so far, and she will continue to 
teach them all. She uses her own earthiness to filter th'3 
waters of life with which the inspired ones would refresh 
her, and purifies them in the course of ages from all taint 
of mortality. This nature will, sooner or later, absorb the 
wisdom of all its teachers, and still demand more light. It 
must triumph. 

These facts teach, further, that we should have faith in 
human nature and in God's providential guidance of it. 
How slowly we learn this ! Every teacher, from the parent 
to the priest, attacks each new type of life as it comes from 
its Maker, with all the necessities of its destiny asleep in its 
little bosom, and begins to cut and chisel and hammer it to 
some other model. I wonder we do not rather stand in 
awe before each one, and pray that we may help and not 
harm it ! We may indeed guide, restrain, and balance a de- 
velopment — a nature, like a tree, may defeat itself by its 
own luxuriance — but, for heaven's sake, let us do it, if we 
can, with nature's methods, not with our own whims or 
crotchets ; much less let us dare touch it in our anger ! 

There is a tendency everywhere to overestimate teaching 
and to underestimate the schools of life and growth. We 
attribute too much to doctoring, too little to exercise. Hoy/ 
many specifics we have for saving society ! One would save 
it with Graham bread ; , another with some kind of "pathy;" 
another with dumb-bells ; another with the positive phiioso- 



2l6 SELECTIONS. 

phy ; another with chemistry ; and another with some style 
of " ism." But I will tell you what will save society — her 
own rugged constitution which will not break down with all 
this drugging or without it. 

I heard a sermon, not long since, on that subject so com- 
mon in the pulpit, and always treated in the same way, 
" What Christianity has done for the world." It made a 
comparison between the world as it was eighteen hundred 
years ago and as it is to-day, and attributed the difference 
to Christianity. I look upon that method as a positive slan- 
der of human nature. It argues upon the ground that the 
w r orld has done nothing for itself during these eighteen hun- 
dred years. One might as well compare the strength, and 
honor, and judgment, and enterprise of a full-grown man 
with the weakness, and peevishness, and indolence of a baby, 
and say the change was owing to the effects of a certain 
boarding-school. That may have had its effects ; but the main 
difference is the difference between childhood and manhood. 
I wonder whether an unprejudiced observer looking, at this 
hour, upon the two nations for whom Christianity has done 
most, would find it easier to tell what Christianity had or 
had not done for the world. 

One half of one nation is in a war of rebellion for slave- 
ry ; and the other half is trying to suppress it, if possible, 
without destroying slavery; and the other Christian nation 
is in full sympathy with that half which she knows to be 
fighting for slavery, even if the other half is not fighting 
against it. I think it would not be unprofitable to show 
what Christianity has not done for the world. But I have 
no taste for such an inquiry, because I do not think Chris- 
tianity has been overestimated, but falsely estimated, and 
that human nature has been underestimated. 



THE PROVIDENCE OF NECESSITY. 217 

It seems to me that we should have all faith in this uni- 
verse. It is worthy of it. It is indeed a terrible discipline 
to keep our faith alive. We often cry in anguish, "O 
Lord ! how long ? But it is all the hope we have. There is 
a volume of truth in a remark of Emerson that, " As we 
go from the spirited meeting of the transcendental club, 
or the abolition club, or the temperance club, and walk out 
into the night and see the stars wheeling on in the old spa- 
ces, and find the old, cool tranquillity everywhere, a voice 
speaks to us from nature, saying, ' What ! so hot, my little 
man?'" 

But let me not close without reminding you that practi- 
cally there is no rule but Paul's : however much our un- 
righteousness commend the righteousness of God, we may 
not do evil that good may come. We can not get behind 
this truth. Because God can and will use our wickedness 
for the trial and discipline of society, it is not the less our 
wickedness. Had we been true and innocent, there would 
have been just so much the less need of trial and discipline. 
Just as the wood and sand which collect in some noble river 
may choke its channel and resist its waters, and thus occasion 
the turning of a million spindles, so we, by our indifference, 
and indolence, and wickedness, may obstruct the currents 
of holy influence which are sweeping through society and 
turn them aside to water other lands and beautify other 
plains. But can we afford to be only the debris in life's 
river? Can we afford to be the. passive occasions of pow- 
er when we might be its living sources ? The pendulum of 
our personal life is so mysteriously attached to the vast ma- 
chinery of Providence that, whether it swing forward or 
backward, the hand on the dial moves on. But does it 
make no difference with us ? We can, indeed, see but a 



2l8 SELECTIONS. 

short way down the long path of life, and can comprehend 
but little of the effects of our activities here ; but this we do 
know, at every turn of the road there stands this motto, 
" Do right, and good must come." The right road can not 
lead to the wrong place, although that place be never so far 
away. But let this comfort us in the midst of our work : 
though our honest plans seem to fail, they do not fail; 
though our own people will not hear nor receive us, though 
friendly hands are unclasped, and friendly voices grow harsh 
and scornful, and we are driven to the Gentile stranger, let 
us not doubt that our failure is our success and the real gain 
of the world. Do not doubt that your child's nature, and 
your own nature, and the nature of society are as dear to 
God as they can be to you, and the resultant of your labor 
and their assistance is your providential life-work. 

" Chances have laws as fixed as planets have ; 
And disappointment's dry and bitter root, 
Envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool 
Of the world's scorn, are the right mother-milk 
To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind." 



IX. 

EACH A PENNY. 

Faithfulness, and not success, is the true criterion of 
service and reward in the providence of God. It is not, 
those who are employed earliest, nor those who work long- 
est, nor those who accomplish most, who receive the great- 
est reward from the householder ; ' but those who are most 
willing to work, those who would be employed, those who 
wait sadly in the market-place and see the strong and 
healthful go to the vineyard before them — these also receive 
their penny. The penny is of no importance in the parable. 
It is meant to illustrate the equality of God's approbation. 
The different times of commencing labor are of no impor- 
tance ; they illustrate only the great consoling truth that 

"They also serve who only stand and wait." 

There are, broadly speaking, two classes of people in the 
world — the passive and the active; those who wait and 
yearn and long, and those who labor and struggle and 
achieve. The active ones naturally regard action as the only 
service, and are very apt to despise the waiting ones, and 
look down upon them because they are not hired to labor in 
the vineyard. The world goes on estimating desert by 
noise and bustle, divine favor by worldly success, spiritual 
power by temporal advantage. Yet life is full of those who 
are waiting in the market-place, who would as gladly serve 



2 20 SELECTIONS. 

as any who have been hired; men and women whose 
souls are hungry for work and a mission, and none is open 
to them. And does not the householder care for nor reward 
such ? Does his favor depend upon work when work can 
not be had, except at the price of slavery ? Does his re- 
ward depend upon success when success is impossible 
except at the price of shame ? This parable says No. 

But there are two kinds of passive people, and two kinds 
of active people. There are passively passive people, 
•and actively passive people. There are passively active 
people, and actively active people. I think these distinc- 
tions must be obvious to the most common observation. 
Indeed, it seems to me to pervade the entire kingdom of 
nature, and I can easily associate it with colors, sounds, 
tastes, as well as with character. Is there not such a 
thing in nature as a live repose and a dead repose ? We 
speak of a dead stillness — have you never experienced 
a live stillness? We speak of a dead calm — have you 
never felt a live calm ? Is there not a wide difference 
between the repose of the same landscape in a thick, 
sultry August day, and its repose on a June day — in 
expectancy before a shower or in jubilee after it ? Most 
certainly there is, and it illustrates the difference in pas- 
sive characters. Some are passive from mere absence 
of activity — a purely negative passivity. They have not 
energy enough to be active. It is not the result of physical 
debility, nor the prostration of hopeless failure, after long and 
sorrowful struggle ; but it is purely the result of indolence. 
Such persons stand in the market-place because they had 
rather stand there than work in the vineyard. Their idle- 
ness is voluntary ; they would not be faithful if they had an 
opportunity. They would not work if they were hired; or 



EACH A PENNY. 22 1 

if they did work, would not earn their penny. It was not 
such passive people who were received on an equality with 
those who had borne the burden and heat of the day. 

The actively passive are those whose idleness is involun- 
tary, who do not work because no one hires them. They 
abhor idleness. The peace of each day is spoiled by the 
chafing of unused powers. As they stand in the market- 
place and see others go, singing and rejoicing, to their labor, 
they feel as the bird does when through the bars of his cage 
he sees his companions sporting in the unbounded sky, or as 
a prisoner when he hears through his window the song of an 
old playmate. Their waiting is a devouring longing. They 
feel as nobly born, as highly gifted, as capable of work, as 
deserving of employment, as any who do work. Such are 
the waiting ones who are employed at the eleventh hour. 
And who shall say that such do not deserve to take their 
place in the favor of God beside any who have borne the 
burden and heat of the day ? 

If we consider the two classes of active people, we shall 
see who would begrudge the penny to those waiting souls 
to whom God hath not yet opened a door of work. There 
are first the passively active people. These are they who 
do not labor from the duty of it, but from the necessity of it. 
They do not feel any responsibility for the use of their talents. 
They do not work to please the householder of the vine- 
yard; nor is it because they perceive that activity is the 
great law of life, and work the condition of harmony. They 
do not feel that God has given them talents for which they 
must return usury ; nor do they feel that the end of labor 
is to bless and help mankind. In other words, it is not 
moral and spiritual fidelity to God which makes them so 
careful and troubled about many things. They labor because 



222 SELECTIONS. 

they are obliged to labor. If they could get money by 
standing idle in the market-place, they would certainly do so- 
They are impelled through the round of daily duty by no 
sense of the dignity of work, but by a simple stress of ne- 
cessity. Hence, such persons are naturally anxious to make 
the most money in the smallest time, and are consequently 
jealous of all who make as much money in less time. But 
are such persons dearer to the heavenly Father than those 
who would gladly serve him to the utmost of their ability, 
could their hands find any thing to do ? 

We can not place too much importance on this distinction 
between the passive worker and the active waiter. Many 
and sad are the wrongs which result from the want of such 
a distinction. Noisy, bustling activity, whether it compre- 
hend itself or not, and especially if it happens to be success- 
ful, receives all the recognition and applause. But some of the 
very highest qualities of character, some of the most godlike 
elements of our nature, are illustrated in those who are com- 
pelled to do nothing, as the world estimates doing. Who, 
for example, receive the gratitude and praise of the country 
for the victories which have just been won ? — victories which 
give a new nobility to the name of republican institutions ; 
which make volunteer armies of freemen a terror to wrong- 
doers. Certainly the men who were on the ground, and 
able to participate in the battles; and that is right. But 
there were hundreds of men languishing in the hospitals 
as willing to fight as the bravest of their comrades. I tell 
you, friends, the trial of these sick men wasting their man- 
hood by slow disease, thinking every hour of themselves and 
of loved ones at home, was a hundred times more severe 
than that of their comrades, intoxicated with the terror of 
battle and maddened by the sight of blood. All honor to 






EACH A PENNY. 223 

those brave boys who, for three days, bore the burden and 
heat of battle ! They deserve all that a grateful country can 
bestow, and their names will go down in history with those 
of patriots and heroes. But there is another book, a record 
kept by angels, wherein are written, side by side with those 
who stormed the breach, the names of many rough men 
who, dying in hospitals, would have shed their blood as 
freely in the work of war as they did shed their tears that 
they could only wait. 

And to go one step further back. When w r e speak of the 
trials and distresses of this war, we speak of men as the great 
sufferers and saviors. But it is not so. Men, under the 
excitement of the moment, enlist and go to the war. There 
every thing is new to them, and the novelties of constant 
change leave little time for regretful memories. But how 
different with their wives, mothers, sisters at home ! To 
them there is no excitement but that of increasing anxiety; 
no change but that of alternate hopes and fears. Every 
day the same little family gathers around the wife to inquire 
if father is sick, or killed, or taken prisoner, or coming 
home soon. And every day her heart, itself craving com- 
fort, must invent some new maternal solace for the griefs of 
these little ones. Oh ! who can tell the sum of anguish 
which is felt in a hundred thousand homes the moment any 
intelligence of the movement of our army is reported ? De- 
pend upon it, that upon woman, now as ever, falls the bur- 
den and the agony of war. She, far more than man, is the 
sufferer for, and equally with him is to be the savior of 
this country. For who is to prevent a deluge of barbarism 
from the effects of this war ? Who is to save the soldier 
from the savageness which his profession almost necessi- 
tates ? Who shall teach him to lay aside his rough ways, 



224 SELECTIONS. 

his coarse speech, his uncleanly habits, and become again 
the gentle, refined, Christian husband, father, friend, and 
citizen ? Who is to teach his children that war is not a 
thing to be coveted for glory's sake, but a thing to be 
abhorred for God's sake and humanity's? Who, indeed, 
but the patient mother, sister, wife, who through these long, 
anxious days is waiting before God, seeking help and 
strength ? And do you doubt that these also shall receive 
their reward ? And can it be less than that of the laborer ? 
Certainly it can not be. 

The world owes as much to those who wait, looking and 
listening for the coming of the householder, as to those who 
bear the burden and heat of the day. Take comfort then, 
ye who would serve, but can only wait ! Take comfort, 
mothers toiling in the unseen work of household life ; and 
ye, who bear abuse, neglect, hard words, while craving 
sympathy and love, and do not doubt that you are laboring 
for the great householder ! Take comfort, young man or 
maiden, longing, aspiring, praying for a work worthy of 
your powers ; your longing is labor ; your waiting is work ! 

" Ah ! do not doubt that to our praise 
Good God not only reckons 
The moments when we tread his ways, 
But when the spirit beckons. " 

But there is a kind of activity which is ^the result of the 
highest possible quality of character. It is a combination 
of the passive and the active. I have called it the actively 
active. I mean an intelligent activity — a voluntary conse- 
cration of energy. A person who has reached this stage of 
development knows that there is no happiness in inaction. 
The ghosts of wasted hours haunt him, awake or asleep. 
He may not work with his hands, nor do any special thing ; 



EACH A PENNY. 225 

but activity he must have, because he has found it to be the 
only law of life. He must work at something, because 
through work alone he is able to satisfy his conscience and feel 
himself united with the working universe ; because through 
work alone he is able to help others or able to acquire the 
best means of self-culture ; because through it alone he is 
able to enjoy beauty, acquire truth, work righteousness, and 
feel the approbation of his God. But such persons must 
also have their seasons of active waiting, of silent prepara- 
tion for more active working. They will have their nights 
upon the mountain, their days of temptation in the wilder- 
ness ; but these are only to help them work the work of him 
that sent them, while it is day. While they wait in. the 
market-place for some great cause to claim them, they learn 
the heart's full scope, and at the eleventh hour climb 
speedily from hope to hope, and stand side by side with 
the earlier laborers in the realization of their longing. It is 
in their hours of active repose that those great accidents 
happen to them by which they are led into some new land 
of promise. In such moods, lying idly in the orchard, a 
falling apple brings secret messages from the Almighty 
which make known the laws that bind all worlds together 
into one. It is said that all great inventions, like the tele- 
scope and the polarization of light, were the results of acci- 
dent. But it is to be remarked that the accidents happened 
to good mechanics or shrewd inventors, never to the pas- 
sively passive people. These persons are not envious of 
worldly success, for they find a better within themselves. 

But so few are found who combine both these essentials 
that God supplies society with many of each. Yea, his 
providence wrings a reaction from the forced activity of the 
miser, the passive activity of the unconsecrated worker, 



2 26 SELECTIONS. 

which enriches the soil of his vineyard. And thousands he 
has who live in the love of life, and who hope from an 
abundance of life to secure salvation — those who live for 
humanity, who are active and public-spirited, striving for 
culture and the highest development. Oh ! how these 
prune and beautify the vineyard of civilization. But, thank 
Heaven ! all around this vineyard stand those who can love 
and bless the worker, though they themselves must stand 
idle — those who catch glimpses of light and beauty which 
the dust of activity conceals from the laborer. These too 
are servants of the Almighty. And blessed are they who 
see that it is so, and who do not grudge these waiting ones 
any reward that comes to them, whether it be in inmost 
character or in the love and homage of discerning souls. 
The ability to do this — to rejoice in the work or in the hap- 
piness of others, though we ourselves are doomed to idle- 
ness, or can not see that we are being rewarded for our toil — 
is itself a sort of work and helpfulness which can in nowise 
fail of its reward. 

" She stood outside the gate of heaven and saw them entering in, 
A world-long train of shining ones all purified from sin. 

" The hero-martyr in that blaze uplifted his strong eye, 
And trod firm the reconquered soil of his nativity ! 

" And he who had despised his life and laid it down in pain, 
Now triumphed in its worthiness and took it up again. 

" The holy one who had met God in desert cave alone, 

Feared not to stand with brethren around the Father's throne. 

" They who had done in darkest night the deeds of light and flame, 
Circled with them about as with a glowing halo, came. 

" And humble souls who held themselves too dear for earth to buy, 
Now entered through the golden gate to live eternally. 



EACH A PENNY. 227 

" And when .into the glory the last of all did go, 
'Thank God I there is a heaven,' she cried, ' though mine is endless 
woe.' 

"The angel of the golden gate said, 'Where, then, dost thou dwell? 
And who art thou that enterest not ?' — 'A soul escaped from hell.* 

" * Who knows to bless with prayer like thine in hell can never be ; 
God's angel could not, if he would, bar up this door from thee.' 

u She left her sin outside the gate, she meekly entered there, 
Breathed free the blessed air of heaven, and knew her native air." 



X. 

ENDURE HARDNESS. 

" Endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ." — 2 Tim. 2 : 3. 

Yes, I even like the word endurance. For we have lost 
an element of strength in giving it up as a heathen virtue. 
It is not the highest virtue, it is not the most teachable 
state of mind in which to receive trial ; but it is a source of 
strength. And as compared with the Christian virtue of 
simple meekness, is far more noble. There are times when 
there is nothing but endurance for us ; times when hardness 
thickens into a terrible fate, in which, for the time, we can 
see no love, no pity, no reason. Blessed is the soul which 
can simply endure, simply exist, though it be dumb, or as 

" An infant crying in the night, 
An infant crying for the light, 
And with no language but a cry." 

If it can do the first work, endure the first agony, and then 
the next, and the next, it shall be led to a vision of higher 
beauty, a sense of deeper harmony. 

There are three kinds of endurance. There is, first, that 
of the stoic, who endures hardness by hardness, bracing his 
whole nature against an iron fate. He shuts the avenues 
of his soul against painful impressions, and builds a wall of 
indifference around his susceptibilities through which no- 
thing is allowed to pass which can disturb his boasted equa- 



ENDURE HARDNESS. 229 

niraity. Marcus Aurelius says, the stoic bids nature " Give 
what thou wilt, and take what thou wilt." 

Another kind of endurance is the pietistic, which becomes 
oblivious to suffering asid trouble through religious enthusi- 
asm. The rapt soul gazes so intently on the Invisible and 
Eternal that all finite ills are swallowed up in the infinite 
beauty. They suffer every earthly loss and endure every 
degree of hardness while the entranced spirit walks the Ely- 
sian fields of religious fancy. It is the very opposite of 
stoicism ; for while that loses the natural effect of hardness 
by excluding it from the heart, this loses it by receiving it 
into a soul too much occupied to attend to it ; as you may 
lose the effect of a strain of music by stopping your ears 
and not hearing it, or by fixing your attention on something 
else and not attending to it. 

" Before the power of love divine v 

Creation fades away ; 
Till only God is seen to shine 
In all that we survey." 

The third kind of endurance is the Christian, which has 
its fairest and best type in Jesus. It is not a stoicism which 
will not love, for fear the loved one may die ; which will not 
feel, lest it give pain; which will not look into the dark 
abysses, lest it be terrified ; which will not contemplate cru- 
cifixion for principle, lest it be unnerved by it. Nor is it a 
pietism which craves martyrdom, which covets pain, which 
hides suffering in beatific visions of future blessedness ; but 
it conquers by love, opens all the windows of the soul to 
love and sympathy, and, twining the nerves of the spirit 
around every human relation, sensitive to the least and the 
greatest throbs of suffering, receiving it into all the channels of 



230 SELECTIONS. 

life, is yet willing to do and bear, willing to suffer and endure 
all things, for love of God and man. Many persons have 
said that the agony in the garden showed weakness in Jesus. 
It certainly did show that he was a man, but a man prepar- 
ing his flesh for a willing sacrifice. Every nerve of his wo- 
man's nature was on fire with pain j and as a man he cried, 
" If it be possible, let this cup pass from me ; but all the 
greater was the heroism of the resolution which followed : 
" Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." There is no 
other measure of his fortitude than the struggle it cost him 
to bring his mind to it. Paul showed the same kind of en- 
durance when he said, amid trials which made him sick of 
life, that it was far better for him to depart and be with 
Jesus, but to remain in the flesh was necessary for his 
brethren. Wellington was wont to say that the best soldier 
was the man who was afraid of death, but was not afraid of 
duty. It is not the man who can not feel what peril is, nor 
the man too much abstracted to see it, who suffers to most 
purpose or does his work best; but the man who sees trial, 
who feels suffering in all its intensity, and yet, for the sake 
of duty, will endure all things. It is not simply that Jesus 
suffered what others inflicted upon him which makes his 
example the best type of endurance. He was impelled to 
inflict hardship upon others. He was to do a work, to 
speak a truth, which must bring great strife and suffering 
into the world. It would set father and mother against 
daughter and son, and make foes of the members of the 
same household, until it seemed to him as if he had been 
sent, not to send peace on earth, but a sword. That was 
hardness. He must speak a great many unpleasant truths, 
tell his best friends of their worst faults, and commit to his 
disciples a doctrine, which would bring them to poverty and 



ENDURE HARDNESS. 23 1 

social disgrace. That was hardness. Yet loving peace, 
and harmony, and comfort, he saw that war for principle, 
discord for duty, discomfort for the truth and right, was far 
better than peace, and harmony, and comfort could be 
while the world was full of unrebuked wickedness. From 
the beginning he expected hardness, and prepared for it, and 
taught his friends to expect it ; and when it came, there was 
endurance enough to match it. 

My friends, my word to you is this. Expect hard for- 
tune, and equip yourselves for it. Expect the loss of pro- 
perty, and friends, and outward advantage. But count the 
cost of a strong personal life in a world like this • count the 
conditions of obtaining an immortal existence separate from 
all the existences of the universe; consider what a foun- 
dation of strength, honor, and heroism it must have ; 
and see how the changes of life are always bringing us back 
to the original sources of power, and how much iron the 
healthful blood must hold, and then learn to endure it, not 
as an accident, not as an unmeaning fatality, but as the 
condition of fulfilling the proudest prophecy of the soul. 



XI. 
JUDGING THE BIBLE. 

Why does not man yield to some freak of his .corrupt 
nature, and some time take a notion to throw away Shake- 
speare, or Homer, or Beethoven, or renounce his love of 
the Alps, or Niagara, and call them all ugly and unworthy 
of reverence ? Because all these things meet a want of his 
nature, and hence he keeps and loves them. They require 
no other authority than their own power to satisfy man's 
love of beauty. And why does not man agree with himself, 
all at once, to abolish the difference between right and 
wrong ? Because the distinction satisfies a demand of his 
conscience, which is an essential and permanent demand ; 
and that alone is sufficient to perpetuate the distinction. 
And the same is true of truth in all its forms. In the long 
run, man separates truth from error. The truth he will not 
give up ; the error he can not be compelled to keep. 

Now, if the Bible is to take its place among the things 
which satisfy some permanent want of the nature of man, 
it must share the fate of all other objects. It must be 
trusted to his moral and religious nature, precisely as Shake- 
speare is trusted to his aesthetic nature, or Euclid and New- 
ton to his intellectual nature. And if men had as much 
confidence in the Bible, as a source of supply of man's reli- 



JUDGING THE BIBLE. 233 

gious want, as they have in Shakespeare and Euclid in their 
respective spheres, they would never demand any other au- 
thority for the Bible. The very effort which they make to 
keep it by force of outside authority betrays a want of faith 
in it. When we begin to prop a building, it shows we are 
losing confidence in its ability to stand on its own founda- 
tion. Otherwise they would say, " If man will keep alive 
Shakespeare, and Newton, and Plato, on account of the 
partial beauty, truth, and goodness in them, surely they will 
need no whip nor spur to compel them to keep alive the 
Bible, with its truth, beauty, charity, and love." Do we be- 
tray a want of faith in the Bible when we put it beside other 
books, and give it to man in the full faith that his love for 
truth and beauty, which have made even Homer and Plato 
immortal on the earth, will make the Bible immortal also ? 
Or do they show a want of faith, who will not trust their 
Holy Book in an equal trial for immortality with a nature 
which has made even profane books immortal ? When 
men say, " You must not point out the untruth of the Bible : 
if you do, men will throw away the truth of it ;" or when 
they say, " If you point out the deformity, they will throw 
away the beauty;" or, "If you reject the immorality, they 
will despise its morality," they betray the saddest want of 
faith both in the Bible and in man. For do but consider it 
a moment. If we condemn the act of Noah, while in a 
state of drunkenness, breathing horrid curses upon his own 
children, will men therefore think the less fondly of that 
dying cry of Jesus, " Father, forgive them ; they know not 
what they do ?" If we condemn the doctrine, " An eye for 
an eye and a tooth for a tooth," will men therefore despise 
the other command, "/Love thine enemy " ? If we reject 
the miracle of turning water into wine, will it make the 



234 SELECTIONS. 

parable of the prodigal son less beautiful ? If we think the 
doctrines of demoniacal possession and the millennium erro- 
neous, will it affect the blessing pronounced upon the pure 
in heart, the peacemakers, the merciful, the faithful ? Will 
it not rather give power and prominence to the true and 
beautiful objects of the Bible, if we take the brush of cri- 
ticism and paint these errors into a dark background, or the 
unimportant things into neutral tints, just where they be- 
long ? 

I can tell you, friends, some one who loves it must per- 
form' this friendly office for the Bible, or the work will be 
roughly done by those who do not love it. The inconsis- 
tencies of the old claim for the Bible are seen and perfectly 
well understood outside the church; and if the pulpit is 
not magnanimous enough to confess its old error, the Bible 
will be thrown aside altogether, as it is indeed now in a fair 
way of being. For it is plain to be seen that the Bible was 
never read less, in Christendom, than it is at this day. 
Thousands and tens of thousands never hear it, except as it 
is badly read from the pulpit, and even then many are glad 
when that part of the service is over. A most religious 
churchwoman said to me not long since, " I can not under- 
stand why it is, but I seem to care less about reading the 
Bible the older I grow, and the more readily I learn to as- 
sociate the thought and presence of God with all things 
around me." She felt that it was very wicked ; and yet no 
amount of trying would seem to improve the matter any. 
Now, her feeling is the feeling of thousands, who find all 
the essential truths of the Bible more freshly and powerfully 
illustrated in the literature, art, and science of the day than 
in the foreign and obscure statements of the Bible. If this 
tendency is ever counteracted, it will be done by teaching 



JUDGING THE BIBLE. 235 

people that they are at liberty to open the Bible as they do 
any book ; find any passage of truth or beauty which in- 
spires or satisfies them, and leave the rest to take care of 
itself. They must be taught that they are not obliged to 
accept all or reject all ; that those who love the Bible most 
may be its severest critics ; that it can not stand in the way 
of science or philosophy, nor supersede the necessity of 
individual judgment. 

Did you ever reflect that this is in fact the way in which 
the Bible has always been received ? The most inveterate 
Scripture-reader has his favorite passages, which he reads 
in the various conditions in which his discipline places him. 
Even if he reads from Genesis to Revelation every year, 
the reading in course is merely formal, and has no effect 
upon his mind and heart. But when he is in trouble — 
when a loved wife or child dies, and life seems robbed of 
every joy — he very carefully selects his Scripture. The 
curses of David are mockish to him ; but he reads with 
tenderness, " The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want ;" 
or " Thou hast been our dwelling-place in all generations." 
He passes over the genealogies of Matthew or Luke ; but 
lingers with affection on that sweet poem, " Let not your 
heart be troubled." And so it is always. Bibles that are 
well read are well worn at the best places. Because, when 
men and women are in earnest, and hungering for comfort 
in the fast of a great sorrow, they will of themselves "judge 
what is right." And to this certain instinct of our nature 
we commit the keeping of the Bible. The more thoroughly 
I purge myself from all superstition about the Bible, as the 
word of God, the more heartily do I love it, as the inspira- 
tion and the help of man. 



XII. 
SHEEPFOLDS. 

u I am the door," said Jesus. How absurd, then, to claim 
that he was the sheepfold itself, or the pasture itself, or that 
the door of communion with the infinite is the infinite, or 
that Christ, who found God in life, was God. Did you ever 
observe the peculiar reading of the verse, " I am the door : 
by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and go in and 
out, and find pasture." Now, he could not find pasture by 
going in. There is no pasture in the sheepfold. There is 
nothing green or living there ; it is merely a place to sleep 
in, a preparation to go out again. I should like to hold the 
church strictly to its own definition of this text. If the 
sheepfold is the church, and out of it is the world, very 
good. The church, then, is a place to sleep in ; a place 
where no living thing is, not a blade of grass, nor a lily of 
the field. It is a place which we are never to enter, so long 
as there is light enough to see to be elsewhere. All the 
pasture is, then, in the world. The springing grass, the 
living water, the cooling shade, are out of the church. With 
the first streak of daylight we go out to gather life, and 
strength, and joy, and beauty, and health from the world. 
And at twilight, when the coming darkness reminds us of 
the close, dull fold, we only wish it were always day, that 
we might not be obliged to sleep at all. But we will release 
the church from the alternatives of its own claim. It is not 
a place for sleep, but a place for work, and search for new 



SHEEPFOLDS. 237 

pastures. We will not build a wall as high as heaven be- 
tween it and the world, but would rather take it all down, 
believing that the going out and the coming in are both 
alike essential to salvation. We would leave each soul free 
to rest in the sheltering fold, or feed in the infinite pasture 
of truth. The necessities of life, of a consecrated, harmonious 
life, will mark out the true sphere of the church. There is 
but one test by which every thing essential to man asserts 
its own authority; that test is, " Does it feed a hunger of his 
nature ? Does it quench a thirst of his spirit ?" Whatever 
does this, justifies itself; there can be no other authority to 
a free soul than the authority of truth, and no other test of 
truth than the fact that it gives pasturage to the seeking 
spirit. The truth shall make you free, and the soul left to 
this freedom will naturally find for itself shelter in the fold 
of a true church. But the door must not be guarded by a 
priest, lest he bolt and fasten it, and shut us in when we 
want to go out into living nature. We will go to the church 
which will open a door of thought, through which we may 
look in upon the infinite beauty, goodness, truth. We will 
go to the fold where the weary life may receive new conse- 
cration and new harmony. We will go where music, and 
thought, and, silence, and sympathy may give wings to our 
spirits, and bear them up to pure, cloudless day. And 
while the door shall not be shut by priests, nor bolted by a 
dogma, we will enter cheerfully, and rest securely, or sleep 
sweetly, if we know that the door is watched only by the 
Good Shepherd who knoweth his own sheep, and calleth 
them by name, and smiles his benediction upon those who 
go out and those who come in by the way of the blessed 
life. / 



XIII. 

WHITHER GOEST THOU? 

It is common in theological discussions to divide man- 
kind into two classes — saints and sinners, good and bad, 
saved and lost. But it is an entirely artificial classification. 
It is wholly wrong to base a judgment concerning the ab- 
solute condition of men upon the place which they happen 
to occupy at any given time. It would be absurd to draw 
a line across the Hudson River at West- Point, and say that 
all boats above that line were going to Albany, and all below 
it going to New- York. Absolutely, a boat which is within 
ten rods of Albany, headed toward New- York, with all steam 
on, is nearer New -York than a boat close by the wharf here, 
which is headed for Albany with steam on. The river of 
life is dotted all over with precious life-boats ascending and 
descending. They were launched at different points, they 
have different degrees of speed; some are propelled from 
hearts of fire within, some blown by winds of influence from 
without ; some are freighted with five talents, some with one • 
some are started in one direction, some in another. Now, 
the church stretches her line across this stream at the point 
of conformity, and says, all above this are going to life, all 
below it are going to death. But God, who seeth not the 






WHITHER GOEST THOU ? 239 

church record but regardeth the heart, seeth many a feeble 
soul born at the very gates of death who has manfully set 
his boat against the stream, and is rowing with all his might 
to ascend it. He may be far, far below the church point of 
conformity ; yea, below society's point of propriety, and he 
may die there with his bark set toward the fountain. God 
will not say, Where were you ? but, Whither were you going ? 
On the other hand, God sees many a man born far above 
the line of church conformity, who ingloriously sets his boat 
downward with the current of popularity, and although he 
may die long before he drifts past the church line, or so- 
ciety's line, yet he is absolutely nearer moral death than the 
other who was born at its very door. The prodigal was 
really further from home when he stood on its threshold, 
resolved to seek a far country, than when, in that far coun- 
try, he came to himself and said, " I will arise and go to my 
father." 



XIV. 

THE POWER OF LOVE. 

It is not the exquisite ray of the rose jewel which best 
illustrates the beneficence of light. It is its daily luxu- 
riance ; its steady beaming on the evil and the good ; its 
persistent healing, and blessing, and creating, which most 
fills us with gratitude for the gift of sunshine. So it is not 
the triumph of souls in great rose acts of. heroism which 
best illustrates the beneficence of an exalted love, but its 
daily luxuriance, its steady beaming upon the evil and the 
good ; its persistent struggling through the forests of life to 
" paint the glade beneath our feet and give a glory to the 
grass." It gives courage in the small annoyances of com- 
mon life, no less than heroism in its greater trials : courage 
to be an honest man ; courage to speak the truth ; courage 
to sacrifice self for principle ; courage to bear all things, 
hope all things, endure all things. The smallest opening 
in our daily career which gives the soul an out-look upon 
the clear sky of infinite love, upon the green fields of infinite 
beauty, will make a sick-room, a parlor, a workshop, a 
farm-house, a counting-room, hospital-tent, a sweeter place 
to live in than any palace can be w T here the soul sees no 
further than the clouds. In like manner this love gives 
liberty. The liberty wmerewith Christ maketh his children 
free was no other than the liberty of love. And what does 
that mean ? It means this. If a man does not love the 



THE POWER OF LOVE. 24 1 

right, he must have his power of doing wrong abridged ; if 
he does not love that which is pure, he must be denied the 
liberty of loving that which is impure; if he does not love 
truth, he must be prevented from loving error; if he does 
not love God, he must be hedged about with obstacles to 
prevent him from loving Satan. Now, that was Judaism ; 
and it was not liberty, but bondage. Jesus reversed this 
attitude of the soul toward duty, and said that he who loves 
God with all his mind, heart, and strength, needs no such 
abridgment of his liberty. If he is allowed to do whatever 
he wills, he will not will to do any thing which is not allow- 
able. And if he does, through err:: :r impulse, wander 
from the straight path, the lode-star of his heart's love will, 
sooner or later, bring him back to it. Where true Jove is, 
there is law. Turn a set of men who do not love art into 
an art gallery, and you will be obliged to post up rules, 
" Do not touch the pictures." But if you fill the room with 
artists, they will need :::> c:mma:oa — their love of roe art 
will extemporize laws as they are needed. Thus is love 
always equivalent to law; and hence the apostles called 
Christ the end of the law. 

When Pool writes to the Corinthians, giving some advice 
he says. •• Xot that we have dominion over your faith, but 
are helpers of year joy.'" This she aid be car motto. We 
can have no dominion over each others fa oh. and hence 
we are no: responsible f:r i: : ba: we can be helpers c: each 
other's joy. And when we see this Love, we may trust it 
with liberty to work and worship according to the dictates 
of its own free choice. It is vain to erect our guide-boards 
over the field of truth, and write thereon, " Go not this way, 
far it leafs :o the desero of atheism :'* ••' Nor this way. for it 
leads to the lair of nonconformity ;" " Nor this, for it will 



242 SELECTIONS. 

take you to the wilderness of free-thought." It is better, 
far, that we try to awaken in the hearts of men a true love 
for truth and right, and then set them at liberty in the 
green pasture. They will not fail to hear his voice when 
he calleth them by name. From such a steady attraction 
we shall make no fatal deviations. 

Is a man earnest, and has he given his heart to the high- 
est and the best ? Has he true love and true courage ? 
Then give him true liberty, and his liberty will be fidelity 
to law. 

But, once more, this love, when pure, and courageous, 
and free, will also be helpful. No love is true which is not 
helpful. If we love a person for the pleasure or profit he 
can give us, it is a small and selfish love, and does not cast 
out, but only creates fear — a fear lest we lose the pleasure 
or the profit. Nor does it make us free, but enslaves us to 
the prospect of gain through friendship. It is incapable of 
rising into the higher offices of discipline. When parents 
love a child merely because the child flatters their pride, 
such a love will certainly show itself in ruinous provisions 
for the child's imaginary wants. But when parental love 
shows itself in helpfulness ; when it has the courage to 
rebuke and deny, as well as the affection to cherish and 
caress, then only is it pure and like God's love. When a 
man and his wife love each other only for the convenience 
of it, it is no true love. When they help each other to 
answer the highest and best end of existence, then there is 
true love ; and so on. If I have an ambition for you, it is 
that this truth may become the law of your spontaneous 
life ; for what other result of church influence is comparable 
with this of helpfulness inspired by love ? We can speak 
the truth to those we love, and they will hear it from us, and 



THE POWER OF LOVE. 243 

so will we from them, as they or we will not from the world. 
True love is not that flat and unprofitable thing which ro- 
mances dream of; but the most vital power and the most 
powerful vitality which can energize a soul. Jesus said, 
" Love one another as I have loved you ;" but how had he 
loved them ? He had told them their faults ; he had re- 
buked their sins and corrected their errors ; but he had 
given them such help — had transformed their poor fisher- 
man-life into such different life — that he and they might 
well look upon it as a true type of true love. This is a 
universal law of relation between man and his means of 
growth. He who loves a church as a means of helpfulness 
to his soul, and of his soul to other souls, loves it truly, and 
will give it all the help in his power, and receive from it all 
the help in its power. He will help it to be courageous, 
and free, and abounding in good works. But if he loves it 
for any other purpose — its size, or show, or popularity, or 
wealth, or any thing but as a means of getting and giving 
help — it is a false love, and will do him harm. And so far 
is it from casting out fear, that it creates little else. If a 
man loves a church for its wealth, he is fearful lest some- 
thing will be said or done there which will make it poor ; 
if for its numbers, that something will be said or done to 
create division ; if for its aristocracy, that something will be 
said or done to make it appear democratic. He only has a 
right love for the church who believes that two or three met 
together in the spirit of Christ's love, courage, liberty, and 
helpfulness are a truer church than all the formalists of 
Gerizim and Mount Zion. 

And the same is true of our relations to our country. A 
true love will make' a true patriot. It will make a patriot 
who loves his country as a means through which he be- 



244 SELECTIONS. 

comes a sharer in the destinies of the world — a helper of 
humanity and humanity a helper of him. He will love his 
country because it is a step in the flight of altar-stairs by 
which the race goes up to its true destiny of universal 
liberty. Oh! how our poor country needs such patriots 
to-day ; men, women, and little children who love her with 
a courageous love, a love which will hope and prophesy 
great things of her future ; patriots who love freedom for 
themselves, and who respect it as a right of others ; patriots 
who count it clear gain when they are counted worthy to 
help their country. To give it their faith, their blood, their 
bounty, their all, is so much treasure laid up in heaven. 

Whatever other great effects may result from this strug- 
gle, the greatest will be to create in us all a braver, freer, 
and more helpful love of country. The want of this has 
been our greatest curse, our most fatal disease. All other 
evils were but symptoms of this. If the religious men of 
this nation loved it as Jesus loved Jerusalem when he wept 
over it, and prophesied its destruction ; if they had as cou- 
rageously rebuked its iniquity, in the name of God, and yet 
spoken the truth in a love which could have wept, we 
should not have been where we are to-day. Alas ! that 
through this old heathen school of war we are to be taught 
in this century the Christian grace of a world-embracing 
love. But come at what cost it may, it will be cheaply 
purchased. 



XV. 
PAST AND PRESENT. 

" Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these ? for 
thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this." — Eccl. 7 : 10. 

We do not inquire wisely when we speak thus of our for- 
mer days ; first, because the change is not in the times, but 
in ourselves. We see them from a different point of view. 
We do not judge them now, smarting under the pruner's 
knife, but in the soft light of memory, in the pure spaces of 
thought, and we are able to see that the discipline of those 
days had special reference to the happiness and success 
of these. All that we say of childhood was true of it, and all 
that old age says of maturity is true of it ; but we did not see 
it so at the time. These lights were indeed in our sky, 
while we were under their meridian ray; but the sun of am- 
bition was up, and the earth was full of its gairish light, and 
we saw them not. Now, as the sun descends and the twi- 
light steals upon the distant east, and the air grows clear 
and still, we see that our sky was full of stars. And we do 
not inquire wisely, secondly, because we do not learn the 
right lesson from the facts. When we first discover that 
the past was a good time, that childhood was full of joy, 
and youth and manhood full of blessedness which is now 
passed away, we are impatient and gloomy, and faithless 
about the presents We wish the old times would come 
again. Whereas, it should teach the very opposite lesson. 



246 SELECTIONS. 

It should teach us that somewhere in the present, in some 
unsearched nook or corner, are all the elements of the 
"golden age;" that if we are disappointed in our onward 
pursuit, it is only that w r e may look about us more closely 
for things which we were overlooking in our haste. But 
even if no such explanation of our present trial is found, the 
very fact that the former times seem better than these, should 
teach us to have faith that, when the smart of this hour's 
trial is over, we shall look upon it from the future and see 
its meaning. Instead of making us impatient and gloomy, 
it should make us patient, and courageous, and hopeful. 
When the present time seems hard to you, ask yourself, 
What have I missed ? What can I find in the darkness of 
adversity which I did not see in the light of success ? 

And why, in like manner, does a nation inquire unwisely, 
when it cries, The former times were better than these ? 
Because it is not true of any live nation ; it is a trick of the 
imagination or a false sentimentalism. The moment any 
object of thought is removed from the correction of fact and 
present reality, imagination begins to play her magic games. 
Just in proportion as a better criticism corrects the judg- 
ment of the past, in that proportion do we find that those 
times were far behind these in interest and promise. What was 
that golden time which the English are so fond of praising ? 
It was a time when the best establishments of the island did 
not live so well as most of our day-laborers live ; when the 
students of Cambridge dined on a farthing's worth of beef, 
a little salt and oatmeal, and nothing else ; when the king 
himself did not get such good medical advice and treatment 
as the poorest man of our city can get for nothing. It was 
the time of the sweating-sickness and the plague ; a time 
when the northern counties were the theatre of constant 



PAST AND PRESENT. 247 

robberies, murders, conflagrations, and violence of all sorts ; 
a time when a capricious queen was sole guide of church dis- 
cipline; when the jails were filled with men like Coverdale, 
Johnson, and Wentworth, guilty of nothing but pure morals 
and doubts of the queen's infallibility; w r hen the court was 
ruled by libertines like Leicester, and the church by bigots 
like Cranmer ; when more than seventy-two thousand per- 
sons suffered death in a single reign at the hands of the exe- 
cutioner. This was the age of Good Queen Bess ! Did the 
people who lived in it feel that it was a golden one ? 
Alas ! how little do we realize what that time was to those 
pure, earnest men who loved freedom and truth more than 
the favor of princes. How lonely in the swarms of men ! 
What prisoners to their great thoughts ! How poor they 
were ! How their wives and children suffered ! How they 
trembled, strong men as they were, when asked to choose 
whether they would give up their deepest sense of truth and 
right, and have a competence, or cleave to them, and see 
their loved ones turned into the streets, friendless and pen- 
niless ! Did they think their times good ? I think not. But 
we look back upon that great endurance as merely the 
shadow in a grand picture, a reverse in a novel of whose 
denouement we have no doubt, because we see that it 
was out of such misery that the phoenix of Puritanism 
sprang ; that it was such oppression which freighted the 
Mayflower, and through such agony a new world was born ; 
and the greatness of the result sheds its lustre backward 
upon the suffering which Queen Bess produced, and glorifies 
each scene of grief and heart-sickness. As we look from 
this hour into Robert Johnson's pent-up cell, it widens be- 
yond the circle of the stars, and all great spirits of the 
past greet him as their peer ; but no thanks to the times. 



248 SELECTIONS. 

Neither was our own Revolution a better time than this. 
It was a time that tried men's souls. It was a time of 
division, and petty jealousies, and mean motives, and ad- 
verse fortunes. Congress was jealous of Washington, and 
Hancock was jealous of Washington, and Lee was jealous 
of Washington. The people would not provide for the 
army, and the army could not fight for the people. Reverse 
followed reverse, retreat followed retreat. Friends deserted, 
and turned traitors and spies. The feeble colonies were 
sprinkled over with Tories in communion with the enemy. 
Men who are halting between two opinions in their country's 
distress now, think there is no doubt where they would have 
been in the Revolution. And, indeed, there is no doubt 
our peace-men would have been Tories ; and our Northern 
men of Southern principles would have been traitors, and 
some of our newspapers would have opposed Washington ; 
others would have excused General Arnold, and so on. 
There were no magic charms about those days which raised 
men above the influence of selfish motives. They went into 
that war step by step, as necessity compelled, and declared 
themselves free and independent at last as a military necessity, 
no greater than that which seems to call for the emancipa- 
tion of our enemies' slaves to-day. There were no braver 
men, nor more heroic women, then than now. Men leave their 
plows in the furrow, their hammers on the anvil, now as they 
did in the Revolution, and from as pure motives. I make no 
comparison now of the material changes which this age has 
witnessed, and of which it reaps the advantage. I speak 
of time as God's discipline of men and nations, and as such 
all time is precious, but every present time the most precious 
of all. I protest against this habit of attributing all great 
achievements to some ripeness of time, because in reality 



PAST AND PRESENT. 249 

heroism and heroes are the same always and in all times. 
It is easy enough to see and admire heroism in people who 
brave public sentiment for truth's sake, provided always that 
they are so far from us in time or place that our sympathy 
will not bring us into odium. Men will worship the heroes 
of history, or of Italy, at the same time they are building 
fires for the prophets and martyrs of to-day. The man who 
as governor of Massachusetts ordered Garrison's paper sup- 
pressed as a nuisance, because it advocated the cause of the 
oppressed in this country, goes into raptures over Garibaldi, 
who went into Italy and made such sad havoc among the 
oppressors there. 

There is nothing more hopeless nor helpless than that 
rose-water conservatism which will not touch the hem of a 
hero sweating in our own streets, but sighs for those delight- 
ful days when heroes wore silken hose and silver buckles, 
and hacked off kings' heads without losing favor at court, 
and resisted oppression while courting the oppressors' 
daughters, and liberated slaves without losing their masters' 
custom. There never were such times. Heroes have al- 
ways been uncomfortable people for contemporaries to get 
along with. They have had one idea ; and it would ob- 
trude itself upon all occasions. They would shock their 
friends. They would get into the doctors' seats and dis- 
pute when mere boys. They would eat and talk with un- 
anointed people. They would go into respectable places 
of worship with a whip of small cords. They would not deny 
the truth in Pilate's judgment-hall. They would not call a 
wrong right when nails were driven through their hands. And 
when torture had done its utmost, they would cry, " Thy will 
be done." Now, all >diese things are very pleasant to talk 
over after the poor, lonely man has risen, and appeared to 



250 SELECTIONS. 

the world in glory; but while he lives, thirsting for a drop 
of cordial love, the world will say, " Art thou this man's 
friend also ?" And how many shameless ones will swear they 
never knew him, and then sigh for the former times, which 
were better than these. 

" Thus we make their truth our falsehood, thinking that hath made 
us free, 
Hoarding it in mouldy parchments, while our tender spirits flee 
The rude grasp of that great Impulse which drove them across the 
sea." 

This is all false reasoning and false sentiment, which emas- 
culates society .. It is inquiring unwisely. It is missing the 
meaning of the past. What has come out of the former 
times was in them as a tree is in an acorn ; but it was not 
visible to such men as now sigh for those times. 

The Jews made much of being Abraham's children. 
Jesus tells them they are not Abraham's children, because 
they slay him • this did not Abraham. The heroes of any 
time are the men who see the promise of a great future in 
the dull routines of the present, and live' and labor for them. 
Their labor is foolishness to the merely comfortable men of 
all time; but to the right-minded it is the power of God 
and the wisdom of God. Now, the lesson this should 
teach us is, not impatience and disgust with the present, 
but the opposite. It should teach us that all the issues of 
the future are sprouting in the germ-cells of this hour, 
strengthened by all the nurture of the past. Oh ! there 
was never such a time as this. All that has gone before us 
is emptied into the lap of to-day ; and all that comes after 
us must issue from to-day. I have often wished that I had 
lived in this period or that of the past ; but I would rather 



PAST AXD PRESENT. 25 1 

live now than at any time since God said, " Let there be 
light !" 

"'Tis an age on ages telling; 
To be living is sublime !" 

All our delays, and disappointments, and fears of compli- 
cation ; all our pecuniary distress and domestic sorrow, are 
but the birth-pangs of a higher civilization. Those who 
live after us will think of us as glorified by the issues which 
follow — as being above all murmuring and complaint. If 
we inquire wisely, we shall say, " No time was ever better 
than this time ; but, O God ! give us the wisdom to see 
and feel thy purposes in all this trial, and sorrow, and loss." 
Every age which is glorious in the past is pleading with us 
to make this age sublime. May we count every thing as 
dross when weighed against the possibility of freeing civili- 
zation from the thraldom of a great iniquity ! 

And once more. The church does not inquire wisely 
when she holds up a remote past as the only age of inspira- 
tion, and light, and miracle. To do this, is to judge the 
Christian era itself unjustly. That was its infancy, it is 
stronger now ; that was the day of its poverty, it is richer 
now : that was its beginning, now we have its development. 
Why should we judge this religion by its childhood, when 
its manhood is before us ? If the result proves that it has 
not accomplished all that was hoped for it, and promised 
of it, the truth should be frankly confessed. If it has ac- 
complished more, the fact should be just as frankly admit- 
ted. At all events, it is unwise to judge it only by its pro- 
mise. Christianity has accomplished more than it promised 
at first ; but very differently than it promised. It did not 
become a theocracy,- as was expected, but a republic. It 
did not close up the world's affairs, but it gave them a new 



2 52 SELECTIONS. 

career. It did not remain a distinct and separate influence, 
but became absorbed in the great natural forces of society, 
and now works in a thousand unanointed ways, where it is 
not seen nor felt as Christianity. Its efforts to raise men 
above their condition, and show them the Father, have 
been aided immensely by all the independent developments 
of science, of art, of literature, and all the social enterprises 
and reforms. These are not the fruits of Christianity so much 
as its natural helps. And so the religious facilities of to- 
day are a thousandfold greater than they were at the intro- 
duction of Christianity. God is in the world as he never 
was before — in the thought of the wise and the goodness 
of the good. 



XVI. 
THE PURE IN HEART. 

But most important of all is a pure heart as a condition 
of right thinking. I do not mean by this that the affec- 
tions may or can do the work of the practical understand- 
ing, to which alone belong all the processes of forming an 
opinion or pronouncing a judgment. But no man can ob- 
serve the sources and the strength of error without seeing 
that it is oftener due to the heart than the head ; to false 
feeling than wrong thinking ; to reluctance or proneness 
of affection than to weakness or limitation of reasoning. 
And, on the other hand, it is impossible to deny that the 
success of research depends closely upon the singleness of 
aim with which it is undertaken, and the fearlessness of 
purpose with which it is pursued. Xo man can hope to 
see God in truth — that is, to find the absolute truth — if his 
heart is continually casting side-glances at his personal in- 
terests. This clear on-looking of the heart is so essential to 
the perception of truth, that God seems to have secured it 
to genius by a certain obtuseness of sensibility concerning 
the consequences of fearless, aggressive thought. 

There is no protection for us against the refractions of 

" false affection but in the love of God, which occupies the 

entire mind, heart/ and will. That is, unless we love the 

absolute and seek it; unless we are always willing to believe 



254 SELECTIONS. 

that we have as yet seen but a small part of the whole 
truth ; unless we keep the windows of our souls open to 
the ever-increasing brightness of the rising sun of truth, it 
is impossible that we should not warp our minds to do the 
work of justifying our prejudices and excusing our prepos- 
sessions. A great deal of what is called reasons for belief is 
merely excuses for belief already formed. There is no in- 
fallible action of truth upon the understanding which secures 
it against these biases of the heart. It is impossible for a 
mind to justly comprehend the testimony of the rocks when 
the heart is determined that they shall testify to the cor- 
rectness of the Mosaic account of the creation. The mind 
can not understand the relation of the earth to the sun, if 
the heart is preoccupied by Jewish astronomy. No critical 
understanding can determine what the Bible actually teaches 
so long as the heart adores it as an infallible fetich. You 
remember the controversy between the dissenter and the 
English bishop upon the right of the Established Church to 
tax dissenters. The bishop was unable to see the injustice 
of it, and the dissenter, in despair of convincing him, took 
out a piece of paper and wrote on it the word " God," and 
said to the bishop, " Do you see that ?" " Yes, to be sure 
I do." He then took a guinea and put it over the word, and 
said, " Now can you see it ?" " Not through that piece of 
gold," was the indignant reply. 

How constantly one comes upon that piece of gold be- 
tween the eyes of men and God ! In despair, you see the 
clearest arguments fly off from the fore-closed mind like 
hailstones from a slated roof. The bias of the heart ad- 
mits only that kind of light to the mind which will make 
the whole world appear red, green, or blue, according as 
the emotional medium is. It is not always right to say that 



THE PURE IN HEART. 255 

it is willful blindness ; for so subtle is this illusion, so far re- 
moved sometimes from the immediate error, that we are 
conscious of no insincerity, no prepossession of false love. 

It is impossible, says Coleridge, for the mind to contem- 
plate the same class of evidences for any considerable 
length of time without forming a judgment in their favor. 
And how do men determine what class of evidences they 
will consider? Usually by some obscure or prominent 
hope that such or such an opinion will be found true. A 
man is born in a given church. His father, mother, bro- 
thers, sisters, and all his playmates attend it. When he 
grows to manhood, he looks around, not for perfect truth, 
but for evidences to satisfy his mind with the objects which 
have long since satisfied his heart. Almost unconsciously 
to himself, he gives the most cordial welcome to that side 
of truth. It is wrong to accuse him of insincerity, for he 
may be perfectly sincere. Still, you often feel, when trying 
to convince his understanding, that every suggestion must 
go through a tangled web of prepossessions before it can 
reach him ; every sortie of your logic is exposed to the cross- 
fire of his distrust, which lies in ambush along every en- 
trance to his mind. Then see how that man's conviction 
is sometimes changed. Perhaps he loves a woman of dif- 
ferent belief, who, even if she returns his love, will never be 
his wife except upon condition of his accepting her faith. 
With what eagerness he will look for evidences that she is 
right, and with what joy will he welcome any thing which 
favors that change upon which he imagines his whole hap- 
piness depends ! At last he will find what he seeks — a belief 
corresponding with his love. 

Or, it may be, a man's social relations become more 
agreeable to him in a new than in the old church, and 



256 SELECTIONS. 

from that moment a new window of the soul is opened, 
while the other begins to close. Understand me, I am 
not saying that this is true in every case ; nor that it is al- 
ways wrong. There are multitudes in all churches whose 
pure hearts see God through and beyond the dogma, if not 
in the dogma. And in any case I am not sure that this 
same fore-feeling of the heart is not a perversion of nature's 
method of preserving the continuity of history in the masses 
who are incapable of independent, fearless thought. But I 
wish to show that there is something besides mere argument 
which enters into all these questions of sect and party, and 
to show how wisely Jesus always insisted upon a heart in 
love with the absolute and eternal, a pure heart given fully 
to God, as the condition of all right thought of truth and 
all right views of duty. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy 
strength, and with all thy will, and thy neighbor as thyself. 

Again see how completely our national hopes now de- 
pend upon the purity, unselfishness, and heroic love of the 
people, upon the capacity of looking through all present 
interests and hopes to the real right. If we fail, it will not 
be because the issue is obscure, the right and wrong in- 
volved in uncertainty, nor because there is great doubt on 
which side the pure in heart may see God ; but it will be 
because the people are so in love with peace, and ease, and 
par values and party ties, that they can not and will not see 
the plain right. 

Paul describes certain lost souls as men in whom the 
god of this world had blinded the minds of them that 
believe not. And I know of none more hopelessly lost 
than those whose god is hidden by a golden guinea or a 
bale of cotton. There is no other way, except by this 



THE PURE IN HEART, 257 

shameful prepossession of the heart,of accounting for the flim- 
sy reasons which men give for desiring to block the wheels of 
the administration, reasons which they will some time look 
back upon in astonishment and wonder how they were ever 
influenced by them. This man says, " My son wasn't pro- 
moted when he ought to have been — therefore the rebels 
are right." Another man says, " There has been misman- 
agement and corruption — therefore I will vote against the 
government t" As if one who was dissatisfied with purga- 
tory should deliberately emigrate to hell. This is not rea- 
soning, it is excusing ; it is not the forming of opinion, but 
the fortifying of prejudice; it is not following the guidance 
of truth, but yielding to the love of ease and comfort, and 
worldly success. 

How clear it is that, corresponding with all intellectual 
life, and parallel with it, there must be an emotional life, 
each helping and sustaining the other. From beginning to 
end of our development, there must be this cooperation of 
intellect and emotion. 

In all our efforts at moral and religious culture, it should 
never be forgotten that men must have something to love 
and engage their emotions as well as something to believe 
and engage their intellects. 

It is in vain that you try to tempt a Trinitarian out of his 
warm emotional home by any ghastly dissections of his 
Trinity or atonement. They are little more than pictures 
on the wall ; not his substantial home-comforts. And, on 
the other hand, unless there is some advance of thought 
corresponding with each arousal of the emotions, the cer- 
tain result is sentimentalism and cant. It is like stimulat- 
ing the tendrils of a vine without giving it a trellis to fas- 
ten to; its very luxuriance makes it fruitless. God help us 



25S SELECTIONS. 

to be pure and teachable, and fearless in pursuit of truth, 
that the truth may make us free indeed. God help us so to 
love one another as to share a common purpose and to 
seek a common destiny, that we may find a true and help- 
ful fellowship ! God bless to our hearts these Sunday morn- 
ings and evenings, this lovely tabernacle, this goodly friend- 
ship, our morning songs and vesper hymns, and silent 
prayers, that this church may be to us not only a school 
for our thought, but also a home for our souls ! 

" O friends ! we need nor rock nor sand, 
Nor storied stream of morning land ; 
We lack but open eye and ear 
To find the Orient's marvels here; 
The still small voice in autumn's hush, 
Yon maple-wood the burning bush." 



XVII. 

PERSONAL RELIGION. 

Christendom has tried to import a full religious devel- 
opment into the character from three foreign sources: from 
Christ, the Bible, and the Church. In one or all of these 
ways have men tried to persuade themselves that there was 
some other way of getting religion than by being religious — 
some other way of getting religious strength than by reli- 
gious exercise. 

I am persuaded that Christ never dreamed of any such 
transfer of righteousness. He never thought of giving his 
life to men, save as they lived as he lived : nor his truth to 
them, save as they believed as he believed; nor his peace 
to them, save as they trusted as he trusted. Does he say, 
'*' Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and 
I will give you rest" ? It is only upon condition that they 
take his yoke upon them, and learn to do as he did; then 
they should find the rest which he had found. 

Does he promise to give his life to the world ? But there 
is always one stern condition, " This do, and thou shait 
live." 

Alas ! to get Christ's religion is to be Christ-like. And to 
imitate him in the smallest things is a great deal more labo- 
rious than to believe that he was any thing — God or man. 
It were a rich gift, indeed, could he impute to us, in our 
weakness, all the religious strength which he had acquired 



260 SELECTIONS. 

through so much sorrow, and love, and sacrifice, and pain, 
and prayer; through so much agony of doubt and joy of 
assurance. But it can not be. However much he might 
have yearned to see all whom he loved so dearly partake 
of his strength, and light, he could no more communicate 
it to them than he could give them the beauty of his eye or 
the majesty of his form. He alone who doeth his will can 
know of his doctrine. Would we possess his life, we must 
toil in his way. Muscular strength belongs to those who 
take muscular exercise ; intellectual strength, to those who 
take intellectual exercise; religious strength, to those who 
take religious exercise. I can not see that this law ever is, 
or ever was, interfered with. Nor can I see why a physi- 
cally strong man might not communicate his powerful mus- 
cles, his steady nerves, his bounding pulse, his healthful 
blood to a physically sick man, as easily as Christ could 
communicate his faith, hope, love, life, and strength to a 
morally sick man. 

No, my friends; Christ gives us religion only as his 
words, his spirit, and his example encourage us to stand in 
awe, commune with our own hearts, and be still. The Ca- 
tholic Theodore, in the fourth century, exclaimed, " Let 
Christ have become God, I envy him not. What he has 
become, I may become, by the strength of my nature." 

But again we are told that we have our religion in the 
Bible ; that we have only to accept the Bible, and we are 
safe. To this we answer that the Bible is entirely outside 
of our life, as much as any other book, and is, therefore, 
not our religion. It may teach us religion; but it is no 
measure of that which we actually possess. That we read 
it once, twice, or ten times a day, so long as it does not en- 
ter into the texture of our spiritual being, avails nothing. 



PERSONAL RELIGION. 26 1 

But it can not enter our being except by spiritual assimila- 
tion. Not until we have thought it into our thought, loved 
it into our affection, lived it into our consciences, does it 
become our religion. I have known several of those scrip • 
tural prodigies who could repeat, it was said, the Bible from 
beginning to end ; and, without exception, they have been 
unbearably stupid men, who could not give you a common- 
sense maxim for the business of daily life out of all their 
store of words. Yet, according to the theory, they should 
have been wonderfully religious men. When you ask men 
about their religion, they are wont to take the Bible in their 
hands and say devoutly, " Here is my religion." If I 
should ask you how much you weigh, you might just as well 
take hold of your flour-barrel and meat-barrel, and say, 
" Here is my weight." The nutrition which they contain will 
enter into the structure of your body after you have eaten, 
and digested, and assimilated them, and not before. So when 
you have read, and digested, and assimilated the Bible, the 
nutrition which it contains will become a part of your reli- 
gious character ; but not before. Take its precepts into the 
chambers of your soul, while the passions are still and the 
spirit reverent and thoughtful, and they will yield you their 
pearl of truth. There is no book to which this chemistry of 
personal thought must not be applied to distinguish truth 
from error. It would seem as if God had purposely mingled 
the two in all objects of thought, in order that the spirit of 
man may be challenged, at every turn in life, to live and 
think for himself. 

And thus the moment we turn to the church and ask her 
to give us religion, the questions arise, " Which church ?" 
" What kind of religion ?" There are as many churches 
as there are views of any religious subject, each claiming 



262 SELECTIONS. 

to be the true church; and hence you are thrown back 
upon your reason at once to distinguish the right church 
from the wrong one ; and I really can not see that we are 
more likely to make a fatal mistake in trying to distinguish 
truth from error, than we are in trying to distinguish the 
right church from the wrong one. After such a beginning, 
how absurd is the demand which is next made upon us, 
that we enter the church and lay aside our reason, when it 
is only through reason that we could enter it at all ! 

Go to her as a weary child to its mother ; lay aside this 
labor and care, and she will give you rest and peace; she 
will give you religion. O dear, delightful fancy of the 
feeble soul ! How unwillingly do we learn that our spiri- 
tual mother can not always feed her growing children from 
her own digestion and assimilation. Milk for babes, indeed ; 
but the strong meat for man. He must masticate and digest 
for himself, or it can never become a part of his spiritual 
muscle. It were a sweet thing indeed to go to some uni- 
versal church, and so cheaply find rest in religion. But 
there is no such church. The moment the weary soul 
steps on shore to find the church, it is assailed by a thou- 
sand spiritual hackmen, all crying, "This way, sir!" " This 
way!" " Carriage, sir, to the only first-class church?" " Car- 
riage, sir ?" And it matters not which one you patronize, 
all the rest will laugh at you, and say that you have taken 
the only rickety carriage and balky horses in the lot. 

Suppose w r e enter the church ; can it give us religion any 
more, or in any other way, than the school can give a boy 
wisdom ? Indeed it can not. The priest may recite our 
lesson for us, but it will not add at all to the sum of our 
attainment. We may hide ourselves amid the throng of 
worshipers and repeat the words of earnest men in com- 



PERSONAL RELIGION. 263 

munion with their own hearts ; but it will not aid us when 
we are called upon to account for the talents committed to 
our keeping. Certain eastern worshipers have a machine 
with which they offer their prayers ; and when they want 
to pray, they have only to turn the machine, and bring the 
prayer for that day uppermost. I do not see why that is 
not as true a communion of the poor heathen's soul wit'i 
God as is the rapid repetition of the church prayers, by 
which the Christian is supposed to hold communication with 
his God. Men are continually using these things as if they 
were charms, and had some power of relieving the soul 
from the hard work of religious culture, or of showing a 
shorter way to the blessed life than that by natural religious 
development. Do not understand me as wishing to under- 
value churches, nor the Bible, nor the worth of Christ to 
the soul. Heaven forbid that I should do either ! I would 
only say that the church can not give us religion; the Bible 
can not give us religion ; Christ can not give us religion. 
These are all our helps, our teachers ; but they are of no 
avail unless they lead us directly to the Father; unless they 
teach us to look to him daily for the law of our life, and 
enable us with joy to commune with our own hearts and 
be still. The moment we so regard all outward means, the 
questions of inspiration, of church authority, of apostolic 
succession, are practically settled. The words which feed 
my soul are the words of God; the church which fills me 
with awe, and leaves me to silent communion, is the church 
which has divine authority; the ministry which teaches me 
to live in harmony with this world and all worlds — to find 
God in my daily life ; to feel that he is ever coming to me 
in the joy of my home ; in the love of my loved ones ; in 
the mercies fresh every morning and renewed every eve- 



264 SELECTIONS. 

ning ; in the sorrows which make me still and thoughtful ; 
in the pleasures which make me grateful and glad ; in the 
beauties of every season, and the wonder of every thing : 
the ministry which can teach me all this, is the apostolic 
ministry, whether it began yesterday or two thousand years 
ago. 

The price of such a religion is unceasing vigilance. It 
can not be given to us, but we can find it; and it will prove 
to be the better part which can not be taken from us. It 
may not enable us to enter this church nor that ; but it will 
enable us to stand in awe, and sin not ; to commune with 
our own hearts, and be still. 

" Seldom upon lips of mine, 
Father ! rests that name of thine : 
Deep within my inmost breast, 
In the secret place of mind, 
Doth the dread idea rest ! 
Hushed and holy dwells it there — 
Prompter of the silent prayer, 
Lifting up my spirit's eye, 
And its faint but earnest cry 
From its dark and cold abode, 
Unto thee, my guide and God \ n 



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THE 



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